Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches

Matt Roush says...

The words of 19th-century anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass continue to resonate today, and they take center stage in a special featuring five leading actors reading from speeches covering a range of history from the pre-Civil War 1840s to the post-war 1890s. Denzel Whitaker (Black Panther) reads from “I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery” (1841), in which Douglass first spoke publicly about being raised in slavery. Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors reads from 1847’s “Country, Conscience, and the Anti-Slavery Cause,” Sleepy Hollow’s Nicole Beharie reads from “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” (1852), 76 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Fear the Walking Dead’s Colman Domingo reads from 1863’s “The Proclamation and a Negro Army,” arguing for Black participation in the war after the Emancipation Proclamation, and Westworld’s Jeffrey Wright reads from 1894’s “Lessons of the Hour,” a plea to eliminate prejudice by adhering to America’s founding principles. These speeches should be required reading—and listening.

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