In Ancient Israel, God told the Prophet Isaiah to warn the nation that they were “ever hearing, but never understanding” and “ever seeing, but never perceiving.” If the Ancient Israelites were ever to be healed from their iniquities, Isaiah told them, they must learn to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts. (Isaiah 6:9-10).

George Washington faced similar frustrations as a leader. After the revolution, the new nation was sinking into chaos and depression because there was not a strong national government.

Why didn’t Americans understand and perceive the danger, and take action?

Washington explained that “the people” can only be “brought slowly into measures of public utility.” People “must feel before they will see.”

When it came to slavery, it was as if Americans had eyes, but did not see, and ears, but did not hear. Frederick Douglass and Harriett Beecher Stowe changed all that. By enabling people to feel the horrors of slavery, they enabled people to see that slavery must be abolished!

Frederick Douglass spent more than twenty years of his life as a slave. He escaped bondage, and within a few years became one of the most spellbinding orators for the Abolitionist Movement.

In 1845, he published a short book titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. With touching simplicity, Frederick Douglass described what it was like to be a slave. Through his eyes, Americans could see the beatings, hear the weeping, and understand the cruelty of slavery.

Americans could also see that people whose ancestors came from Africa loved freedom as much as people whose ancestors came from England.

Frederick Douglass said that, even as a child, he yearned to be free: “From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace.” He related that, by the time he was about 12 years old, “the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily on my heart.”

His thirst for freedom turned into a thirst for education.

Frederick Douglass learned the first steps of reading from a kind mistress who was not used to the ways of slavery.

When her husband found out what she was doing, he rebuked her. He warned her that, if you teach a slave to read “there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.”

As Frederick Douglass remembered years later: “These words sank deep into my heart . . . and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.”

He now understood “the white man’s power to enslave the black man.” The whites kept the blacks uneducated!

Therefore, as a child, Frederick Douglass “set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.”

His struggles to learn to read and write far exceeded the oft-described struggles of Abraham Lincoln.

Growing up at roughly the same time, Abraham Lincoln’s problem was that there weren’t many books to read on the frontier. So we inspire school children with tales about how young Abe walked miles to borrow books to read beneath the flickering flames of the fireplace.

In contrast, it was illegal for Frederick Douglass to learn to read or write. The slave-owners, including Frederick Douglass’s master, well knew that they could only keep the blacks down if they kept the blacks uneducated!

Nevertheless, Frederick Douglass persevered.

He learned by using the discarded homework of his master’s son. He tricked the neighborhood children into revealing how to write. He snuck around reading everything he could lay his hands on.

Despite his many disadvantages, Frederick Douglass became a great writer, as well as a dynamic orator.

I’m especially proud to report that he settled in Rochester, New York, only a few miles from where I lived until recently.

Indeed, to cross the Genesee River that runs through Rochester, we drive over a bridge named after two great Rochesterians: Frederick Douglass and his friend, Susan B. Anthony.

In 1847, he started publishing his newspaper, the North Star. I have often seen the historical marker on the site where he published this leading voice of the Abolitionist Movement.

Overcoming all obstacles, Frederick Douglass rose to “the forefront of the abolitionist ranks.”

He lived until 1895. And, for the rest of his life, he continued to stand “on the watchtower of American freedom, championing the cause of all oppressed men and women.”

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This blog is based on passages in my book Visions of America, at pages 61-63 (first published in 2004, together with Visions of the Church). For the supporting sources, please see the endnotes to those pages of my book.

For more of my thoughts inspired by Juneteenth, please read “Juneteenth: George Washington”.

For my thoughts on related themes, please read my blogs “Raising the Star-Spangled Banner—Americans”, “Racism Is America Gone Astray”, “The 500-Year Marathon To Overcome Racism”, “The ‘United States’ Compared to ‘America’”, “George Washington Refuses To Become a King”, “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—Unifying Americans”, “Martin Luther King, Jr.—Restoring Hope and Giving a Vision”, “Nationalism Is Patriotism Gone Astray”, “How Do We Build a Civilization That Is Good—That Is Very Good?”, “We Need Inspiring Visions of a Bright Future. Why?”, “Speaking Up”, “Irresistible Hurricanes of the Holy Spirit”, “Parking Cars”, “St.  Francis of Assisi Made the Way of Jesus Great Again”, “Hypocrisy: Taking Away What You Gave”, “Pandemic Wisdom: Visions of America”, and “Pandemic Wisdom: Scattering the Church”.

For my thoughts about Susan B. Anthony, please read the section “Susan B. Anthony” in my book Visions of America, (printed together with Visions of the Church), at pages 103-104).