In his extensive writings--editorials, speeches, autobiographies--Frederick Douglass revealed little about the private side of his life. His famous autobiographies were very much in the service of presenting and advocating for himself. But Douglass had a very complicated array of relationships with women: white and black, wives and lovers, mistresses-owners, and sisters and daughters. And this great man deeply needed them all at various turns in a turbulent life that was never so linear and self-made as he often wished to portray it. In this book, Leigh Fought aims to reveal more about the life of the famed abolitionist off the public stage. She begins with the women he knew during his life as a slave--his mother, whom he barely knew; his grandmother, who raised him; and his slave mistresses, including the one who taught him how to read. She shows how his relationships with white women seemed to fill more of a maternal role for Douglass than his relationships with his black kin. Readers will learn about Douglass's two wives--Anna Murray, a free woman who helped him escape to freedom and become a famous speaker herself, and later Helen Pitts, a white woman who was politically engaged and played the public role of the wife of a celebrity. Also central to Douglass's story were women involved in the abolitionist and other reform movements, including two white women, Julia Griffiths and Ottilia Assing, whom he invited to live in his household and whose presence there made him vulnerable to sexual slander and alienated his wife. These women were critical to the success of his abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, and to promoting his work, including his Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom nationally and internationally. At the same time, white female abolitionists would be among Douglass's chief critics when he supported the 15th amendment that denied the vote to women, and black women, such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, would become some of his new political collaborators. Fought also looks at the next generation, specifically through Douglass's daughter Rosetta, who was the focus of her father's campaign to desegregate Rochester's schools and who literally acted as a go-between for her parents, since her mother, Anna Murray, had limited literacy. This biography of the circle of women around Frederick Douglass promises to show the connections between his public and private life, as well as reveal connections among enslaved women, free black women, abolitionist circles, and nineteenth-century politics and culture in the North and South before and after the Civil War.

About the Author
Leigh Fought is Assistant Professor of History at LeMoyne College. She is the author of Southern Womanhood and Slavery: A Biography of Louisa S. McCord and an editor of Frederick Douglass's Correspondence.

Reviews
While Fought's approach provides insight into the subtleties of Douglass's beliefs and position, more importantly, it reveals the motivations and beliefs of the women who allied themselves with Douglass. * Julie Roy Jeffrey, Journal of American Ethnic History *
[T]horoughly researched....Although the complex nature of Douglass's relationships with women will never be fully understood, Fought unveils how women were attracted to Douglass and how he equated the servitude of race to that of gender. * John David Smith, The North Carolina Historical Review *
Fought's skill at teasing out Anna Murray Douglass's life and character without any documents written in her own hand is impressive. Anna comes to the reader not the shadowy figure she was to Douglass's acquaintences, but a well-rounded character whose motivations and reactions are grounded in the realities of life as a black woman in the nineteenth century. Overall, this book is not just a well-researched work of history, but an enjoyable read as well. * Stephanie J. Richmond, H-Net *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York history Winner of the Mary Kelley Prize of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199782376
Author Leigh Fought
Format Hardback
Page Count 424
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 794g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 41mm