Frederick Douglas Lifelong Struggle to Emancipating Self and All

Frederick Douglass who eventually emerged as one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland, near Hillsborough,in February of 1817. When Douglas was about eleven years of age, he was sent to his master's shipyards to beat and spin oakum, keep fires under pitch boilers and turn grindstones. During his free time he would strive to master the essentials of writing by imitating and copying the letters on the ships. Using the streets as his schools, his workmates and playmates as teachers, and the fences as his exercise books and blackboards, he learned to write. Much later in life he was to exploit those skills well in response to a request for his autograph. Soon enough, even in those early years a lot a questions surrounding his and other people's freedom or lack of it started to trouble his mind. He wondered, for instance, why were some people slaves whilst others were masters, and whether it has always been like that before, and if not how did it start. Hearing his masters and friends denouncing the abolitionists, his enquiry extended to who and what were the Abolitionists. Answers to the last question he soon found in the columns of the Baltimore American.

Frederick Douglass previously known as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Hillsborough,in February of 1817, as it is commonly believed. The exact date of his birth is uncertain.

Much speculation surround Douglas's earliest years as much as his parentage. One was that he was the descendant of early American Muslims. The identity of Douglass' father is obscure: though Douglass once stated that his father was a white man, refering perhaps to his owner, Aaron Anthony, whom he took as a surrogate father, but later said he knew nothing of his father's identity.

He was separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, when he was still an infant as she was working as a slave in a plantation that was twelve miles away from her six children. He was therefore being cared for by his grandmother until he was five years of age. Although Douglas never learnt the exact date of his birth, he clearly remembers the details of his early life as a slave on a plantation in Maryland.

Once as he remembers, he was visited unexpectedly by his mother who had walked all the way to see him, bringing for him a large gingercake. Frederick as he recalled dropped off to sleep and only woke up the next morning to find her one. He couldn't remember ever seeeing her again. She died not long after when Douglass was about 7. At that age or thereabout, Douglass was separated from his grandmother and moved to the Wye House plantation, where Anthony worked as overseer of the vast plantations of Colonel Edward Lloyd. Here he experienced much of the bitterness of slave life. He was often so pinched with hunger that he competed with the dog, old Nep, for the crumbs falling off from the kitchen table. He would often follow the waiting girl eagerly as she shook the table cloth thus flinging out the crumbs and bones out for the dogs and cats. Such treatment made him a young boy of nine fully aware of the "unjust and murderous character of slavery."

When Anthony died, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld. Mrs. Auld sent Douglass to Baltimore to serve Thomas' brother, Hugh Auld when Douglas was 9. For seven years, he served Hugh Auld , first as a household servant and later as an unskilled laborer in his shipyard.

When Douglass was about 10, Hugh Auld's wife, Sophia, broke the law by teaching him to read. Before long young Douglas had mastered some letters of the alphabet. Soon his mastery developed to such a level that he could spell words of three or four letters. When Hugh Auld discovered this, he strongly disapproved, saying that if a slave learned to read, he would become dissatisfied with his condition and desire freedom. Douglass later referred to this as the first anti-abolitionist speech he had ever heard which stirred much urge in him to equip himself well for his education as a key to his liberation.

Thereafter, as detailed in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (published in 1845), Douglass continued his education by various ingenious means. He converted white children in the neighborhood in which he lived or that he found in the streets into his teachers by getting them to help him with his Webster spelling book which he always kept in his pocket, and by observing the writings of the men with whom he worked. The first fifty cents he earned through shoe-shining he used to buy a popular schoolbook then, the Columbian Orator whose contents he devoured in no time. He obtained from it the speeches of Sheridan which he applauded as "a bold and powerful denunciation of oppression and a most brilliant vindication of the rights of man."

When Douglas was about eleven years of age, he was sent to his master's shipyards to beat and spin oakum, keep fires under pitch boilers and turn grindstones. During his free time he would strive to master the essentials of writing by imitating and copying the letters on the ships. Using the streets as his schools, his workmates and playmates as teachers, and the fences as his exercise books and blackboards, he learned to write. Much later in life he was to exploit those skills well in response to a request for his autograph: "Though my penmanship is not fine, it will do pretty well for one who learned to write on a board fence."

Soon enough, even in those early years a lot a questions surrounding his and other people's freedom or lack of it started to trouble his mind. He wondered, for instance, why were some people slaves whilst others were masters, and whether it has always been like that before, and if not how did it start. Hearing his masters and friends denouncing the abolitioists, his enquiry extended to who and what were the Abolitionists. Answers to the last question he soon found in the columns of the Baltimore American, which featured the story that a vast number of petitions had been submitted to Congress for the abolition of the internal slave trade. He found much hope in those words from that day on.

When Captain Anthony died, the sixteen-year-old Douglass was given to Thomas Auld a cruel and tight-fisted master. Unable to put up with Douglas's rebellious spirit and determined to crush his young and daring spirit, Thomas Auld then sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker," for a year to have his spirit tamed. There Douglass was regularly whipped. From January to August 1834, Douglas was overworked, flogged daily, and almost starved to death.

Sixteen-year-old Douglass was indeed nearly broken psychologically by his ordeal under Covey, but after six months enduring such brutality, he made up his mind to fight back. When the time came he finally rebelled against the beatings and fought back giving the "Negro-breaker" a sound thrashing. Covey lost in a confrontation with Douglass and never tried to beat him again. This incident was kept concealed, possibly because Covey was afraid the news of Douglass' victory would ruin his reputation as a "slave-breaker" or simply because he was ashamed of his defeat. Covey now chose to ignore Douglas. Douglas never forgot that incident describing it as a life-changing one in this extract from his writings

I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before. I was a man now... with a renewed determination to be a free man...I had reached the point at which I was not afraid to die. The spirit made me a freeman in fact, though I still remained a slave in form. Douglas after this episode worked for two years on the plantation of another slave-owner, William Freedland, nearby. Conditions were greatly better here with sufficient food and leisure enabling Douglas to conduct a secret Sunday school for forty slaves. But these were not enough freedom and previlege for him. So he resolved to escape. In early 1836, Douglass made his first attempt to escape from his owner. Together with several others they prepared to seize a large canoe, paddle down the Chesapeake, and follow the North star to freedom. The plot was discovered and Douglas was jailed. About to be sold to slave traders, his master had him sent back to Baltimore where he worked in the shipyards, caulking vessels.

In 1837, Douglass met Anna Murray, a free African American at a meeting of the East Baltimore Improvement society while he was still enslaved. This meeting increased his desire to be free, for he was determined to marry as a free and responsible man not as the property of a master. They were married soon after he obtained his freedom. He successfully escaped slavery on September 3, 1838, boarding a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland, dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a free black seaman. After crossing the Susquehanna River by ferry at Havre de Grace, Douglass continued by train to Wilmington, Delaware. From there Douglass went by steamboat to "Quaker City" - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Here, Douglas in his own account, "lived more in one day than in a year of...slave life." His escape to freedom eventually led him to New York, the entire journey taking less than 24 hours.

Douglas got introduced to David Ruggles, the efficient Negro Secretary of the New York Vigilance , organized to aid fugitive slaves. Ruggles sheltered him for several days until Anna Murray joined him and were married on September 15 by a Presbyterian minister and a few days later the couple were on their way to New Bedford, Massachujsetts, where Ruggles believed Douglas' skill as a caulker would earn them a living.

With the assistance of a prosperous Negro family, the Douglasses settled down to their new life. The opposition of white workingingmen did not allow him to pursue the trade of caulking. He had to saw wood, shovel coal, dig cellars, cart rubbish, blow bellows in a brass foundry, and load and unload vessels at a dollar a day to live. Anna's earnings as a domestic servant supplemented this meager income to support the family.

The pressures of making a living to support his growing family did not afford Douglas many opportunities to continue his education. But the same ingenuity he applied as a slave were put to use once more. For as he wrote, hard work, the whole day over a scalding furnace was more favorable to action than thought. To ensure he makes use of the time in that direction of improving his thoughts, he would often nail a newspaper to the post near his bellow and read while working the heavy beam through which up and down movement the bellows were inflated and discharged.

Douglass joined various organizations in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Instead of attending the white Methodist churches which permits blacks to worship there if they agreed to sit in seperate pews, he joined a small sect, the Zion Methodist, a black church. He soon became a local preacher and attracted much attention and admiration for his great ability as a speaker. In the words of a close friend,"he could speak so that every one would listen to him, and that few, if any, could speak as he could."

He regularly attended abolitionist meetings conducted by the negroes of that community. He started to subscribe to William Lloyd Garrison's great anti-slavery weekly journal, The Liberator and in 1841, he heard Garrison speak at a meeting of the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass was unexpectedly asked to speak at one of these meetings, where he told his story and was encouraged to become an anti-slavery lecturer. Douglass was inspired by Garrison, later stating that "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments (the hatred of slavery) as did those of William Lloyd Garrison. "Garrison was likewise impressed with Douglass, and wrote of him in The Liberator. Several days later, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket. Twenty-three years old at the time, Douglass said that his legs were shaking. He conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his rough life as a slave that electrified the audience through his convincing and moving narrative..

After that John A. Collins, general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society urged Douglas to become an active lecturer for the organisation which he agreed to after much thought. He now decided to dedicate his whole life to the abolitionist cause together with many others including Garrison himself. Douglas lectured throughout the state and wherever he toured crowds listened attentively to his story. In 1843, Douglass participated in the American Anti-Slavery Society's Hundred Conventions project, a six month tour of meeting halls throughout the Eastern and Midwestern United States. He participated in the Seneca Falls Convention, the birthplace of the American feminist movement, and was a signatory of its Declaration of Sentiments.

Douglass "officially" won his freedom when British sympathizers paid the slaveholder who legally still owned him.


A brilliant speaker, Douglass on the request of the American Anti-Slavery Society engaged in a lecture tour which brought him recognition as one of America's first great black speakers and won world fame when his autobiography was published in 1845.

As one of the most prominent figures, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history, Douglas's towering posture showed dignity and strength, especially when speaking, with his powerful baritone voice booming. These features together gave Douglass a strong presence. A firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, American Indian, or recent immigrant, Douglass devoted his life to advocating the brotherhood of all humankind. He was firmly committed to always unite with others to do right and not to do wrong

Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks providing a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

He soon became one of the most effective orators of his day, an influential newspaper editor, a confidant of the radical abolitionist, John Brown, a militant reformer and a respected diplomat.

Douglass' best-known work is his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which was published in 1845. The book received generally positive reviews and became an immediate bestseller. Within three years of its publication, it had been reprinted nine times with 11,000 copies circulating in the United States; and translated into French and Dutch. At the time, some skeptics were questioning whether a black man could have produced such an eloquent piece of literature. A man who claimed to have known Douglas as a slave said that he was incapable of writing such a book.

The book's success made Douglass' friends and mentors to fear that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-owner who might try to get his "property" back. They encouraged him to tour Ireland, as many other former slaves had done. Douglass therefore set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and arrived in Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine was beginning. He was in Great Britain for two years making highly successful lecture appearances.

Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime (and revised the third ), each time expanding on the previous one.

The 1845 Narrative, which was his biggest seller, was followed by My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855. In 1881, after the Civil War, Douglass brought out Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892.

The first two accounts of his experiences belong to the tradition of fugitive-slave narratives popular in the North before the Civil War. The final volume, published when Douglas was in his mid-sixties, reveals one of the most remarkable and successful lives of the nineteenth century. The first version balanced a more detailed account of his life as a slave with the impressive record of his intellectual growth and personal achievement since he had joined forces with the abolitionists in 1841. It told of his intimacy with the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement, of his successful speaking tour of the British Isles, the purchase of his freedom for $700 by a group of his admirers, two Englishwomen, and his moving over to Rochester, New York, where he brought out the first issue of the increasingly outspoken weekly newspaper he published for the thirteen years in December 1847 first as The North Star later as Frederick Douglas's Weekly and Monthly.

The third of Douglas' autobiographies subsumed the first two adding to them the events of his career just before, during and after the Civil War and traces the rising area of his fame and influence and ultimately honored recognition of his countrymen, black and white alike.

Douglass spent two years in Great Britain and Ireland giving several lectures, mainly in Protestant churches or chapels, some "crowded to suffocation," At his hugely popular London Reception Speech, which Douglass delivered at Alexander Fletcher's Finsbury Chapel in London in May 1846. Douglass remarked that there he was treated not "as a color, but as a man." He also met and befriended the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell.

Douglass later became the publisher of a series of newspapers: The North Star, Frederick Douglass Weekly, Frederick Douglass' Paper, Douglass' Monthly and New National Era.."

Douglass' work spanned the years prior to and during the Civil War. He was acquainted with the radical abolitionist John Brown but disapproved of his plan to start an armed slave rebellion in the South. When Brown visited Douglass' home two months before he led the raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Douglas became very jittery and after the incident, amidst suspicion or accusations of complicity in John Brown's raid on the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859, Douglass fled for a time to Canada, fearing he might be arrested as a co-conspirator. Douglass believed that the attack on federal property would enrage the American public. Douglass would later share a stage in Harpers Ferry with Andrew Hunter, the prosecutor who successfully convicted Brown.

Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of black soldiers, and with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage. His early collaborators were the white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips..

In 1851, Douglass merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which was published until 1860. Douglass came to agree with Smith and Lysander Spooner that the United States Constitution is an anti-slavery document, reversing his earlier belief that it was pro-slavery, a view he had shared with William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison had publicly demonstrated his opinion of the Constitution by burning copies of it. Douglass' change of position on the Constitution was one of the most notable incidents of a division that emerged in the abolitionist movement after the publication of Spooner's book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery in 1846. This shift in opinion, as well as some other political differences, created a rift between Douglass and Garrison. Douglass further angered Garrison by saying that the Constitution could and should be used as an instrument in the fight against slavery. With this, Douglass began to assert his independence from the Garrisonians. Garrison saw the North Star as being in competition with the National Anti-Slavery Standard and Marius Robinso's Anti-Slavery Bugle.

In March 1860, Annie, Douglass' youngest daughter, died in Rochester, New York, while her father was still in England. Douglass returned from England the following month, taking the route through Canada to avoid detection.

By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his oratories on the condition of the black race, and other issues such as women's rights.

Douglass and the abolitionists argued that the aim of the war was to end slavery and that African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass wrote about this in his newspapers and gave several speeches declaring his thoughts and how the war was indeed for the liberation of the slaves.

On the night of December 31, 1862, when President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass describes the spirit of those waiting for the announcement: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky...we were watching...by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day...we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries."

Once the slaves were freed, Douglass also wanted equality for his people as well. He and Lincoln worked together providing plans to move the liberated slaves out of the South. Lincoln had doubts about the war ever ending, but soon enough the Confederate forces gave in to the Union and the war to end slavery was won.

After the Civil War, Douglass held several important political positions serving as President of the Reconstruction-era Freedman's Savings Bank; as marshall of the District of Columbia; as minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti (1889-1891); and as chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic. After two years, he resigned from his ambassadorship because of disagreements with U.S. government policy.

In 1872, he moved to Washington, D..C after his house on South Avenue in Rochester, New York burned down -on a case of suspected.arson. Also lost was a complete issue of The North Star.

In 1868, Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant. The Klan Act and the second and third Enforcement Acts were signed into law by President Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and sending troops there and into other states; under his leadership. Over 5,000 arrests were made and the Ku Klux Klan was dealt a serious blow. Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan made him unpopular among many whites, but winning Frederick Douglass' praise. An associate of Douglass wrote of Grant that African Americans will have and cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services.

In 1872, Douglass became the first African American to receive a nomination for Vice President of the United States, having been nominated to be Victoria Woodhull's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket without his knowledge. He neither campaigned for the ticket nor even acknowledged that he had been nominated. Douglass spoke at many schools around the country in the Reconstruction era, including Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1873.

At Abraham Lincoln's memorial, a tribute to Lincoln being given by a prominent lawyer. was not as successful as some of the audience there would have hoped, when Douglass was goaded to stand up and speak. At first out of respect for the speaker he declined, but eventually he gave into the pressure and with no preparation gave a glowing tribute for which he received much respect. The crowd, roused by his speech, gave him a standing ovation. A witness later said, "I have heard Clay speak and many fantastic men, but never have I heard a speech as impressive as that." Lincoln's wife is said to have given Douglass Lincoln's favorite walking stick which still rests in Douglas's Cedar Lodge.

Douglas criticized Lincoln's successors over what he felt was an insufficiently prompt and just Reconstruction policy one the war had been won. Douglas was particularly insistent on the necessity for swift passage of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing suffrage to the newly emancipated slaves. Never satisfied with the grudging legal concessions the Civil War yielded, Douglas continued to object to every sign of discrimination - whether economic, sexual, legal or social. Even after taking up government appointments, he continued to speak out on such matters as the exploitation of black sharecroppers in the South. He went on to demand ant-lynching legislation and to protest the exclusion of blacks from public accommodations. He was also active in suffrage movements for women, believing firmly in the power of the ballot as one of the necessities of freedom.

Douglass had five children; two of them, Charles and Rossetta, helped produce his newspapers. Douglass was an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1877, Frederick Douglass purchased his final home in Washington D.C., on the banks of the Anacostia River. He named it Cedar Hill. He expanded the house from 14 to 21 rooms and included a china closet. One year later, Douglass expanded his property to 15 acres (61,000 m²), with the purchase of adjoining lots. The home is now the location of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

After the disappointments of Reconstruction, many African Americans called Exodusters moved to Kansas to form all-black towns. Douglass spoke out against the movement, urging blacks to stick it out. He was condemned and booed by black audiences.

In 1877, Douglass was appointed a United States Marshall. In 1881, he was appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. His wife (Anna Murray Douglas died in 1882, leaving him in a state of depression. His association with the activist Ida B. Wells brought meaning back into his life. In 1884, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white feminist from Honeoye, New York, the daughter of Gideon Pitts, 1, an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College (at that time Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), Pitts had worked on a radical feminist publication named Alpha while living in Washington, D.C.. Frederick and Helen Pitts Douglass faced a storm of controversy as a result of their marriage, since she was white and nearly 20 years younger. Both families recoiled; hers stopped speaking to her; his was bruised, as they felt his marriage was a repudiation of their mother. But individualist feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton congratulated the two.

The new couple traveled to England, France, Italy, Egypt and Greece from 1886 to 1887. In later life, Douglass was determined to ascertain his birthday. He adopted February 14th as his birthday because his mother, Harriet Bailey, used to call him her "little valentine". He was born in February of 1816 by his own calculations, but historians have found a record indicating his birth in February of 1818.

In 1892 the Haitian government appointed Douglass as its commissioner to the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. He spoke for Irish Home Rule and on the efforts of Charles Stewart Parnell. He briefly revisited Ireland in 1886.

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and given a standing ovation by the audience. Shortly after returning home, he died after suffering a massive heart attack or stroke in his adopted hometown of Washington, D.C. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Douglas's life has become the heroic paradigm for all oppressed people. He is in fact one of the hundreds of freedom heroes I saw showcased at the Underrground Freedom Centre as well as many other exhibitions on American History or Culture in Washington D.C, San Francisco or wherever .His carreer as a champion of human rights led the way for later black leaders like Booker T. Washington, W.E. B. DuBois and Martin Luther King Jr.

Further reading:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. Frederick Douglass, Autobiography (Library of America, 1994)

Foner, Philip Sheldon. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. New York: International Publishers, 1950.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin, and Oscar Handlin. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Library of American Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

Lampe, Gregory P. Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice,. Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998. X

Levine, Robert S. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991

Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Washington: Associated Publishers, 1948.


Works by Frederick Douglass at Project Gutenberg

Extensive summary, analysis, and important quotes from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"

Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at Project Gutenberg.

Audio book of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at FreeAudio.org.

The Heroic Slave at the Documenting the American South website.

Frederick Douglass Project at the University of Rochester.

My Bondage and My Freedom at Project Gutenberg.

Collected Articles Of Frederick Douglass, A Slave (Project Gutenberg)
Biographical information

Frederick Douglass (American Memory, Library of Congress) Includes timeline.

Timeline of Frederick Douglass and family

Frederick Douglas Timeline

Frederick Douglass NHS - Douglass' Life

Frederick Douglass NHS - Cedar Hill National Park Service site

Frederick Douglass Western New York Suffragists

Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Frederick Douglass

Mr. Lincoln's White House: Frederick Douglass

Arthur E Smith is Senior Lecturer of English at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. His articles, stories and essays have appeared in many venues. He was born and grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He holds a Masters in African Literature from Fourah Bay College. He has taught English at Prince of Wales, Milton Margai College of Education & Technology. Mr. Smith is widely published both locally as well as internationally. He was one of 17 international scholars who participated in a seminar on contemporary American Literature sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 2006. His thoughts and reflections on this trip could be read at www.lisnews.org and ezinearticles.com His other publications include: Folktales From Freetown, Langston Hughes: Life and Works Celebrating Black Dignity, and 'The Struggle of the Book in Sierra Leone'