Baltimore newspapers of 100 years ago carried the news that the great Frederick Douglass had died at his home in the Anacostia section of Washington.
The life of the former slave, who was born on the Eastern Shore and who learned to read and write in Fells Point, is the story of a passionate American advocate.
Scholar Waldo Martin calls him " . . . without question the most important African American leader and personality of the nineteenth century."
And so, 100 years after his death, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington has mounted a fitting testimonial, "Majestic in His Wrath, A Pictorial Life of Frederick Douglass." In three rooms, decorated in a style reminiscent of a deep rose Victorian interior, are powerful portraits, ancient photos and brittle historic documents.
These well selected objects convey a personal view of a monumental life. Here is a visual biography, a study in faces.
It is high praise to say that even if you spend a half hour viewing these objects, you will leave having learned much about the man and the anti-slavery movement he so ardently embraced.
There is nothing quite like a portrait painting hung only 18 inches away from its viewer to impart the tone, feel and character of a subject. As the show points out, he was a "remarkably brilliant, passionate and complex man." Stand and look at these pictures and you'll see that demonstrated.
Frederick Douglass's face is a composition of strength, conviction and certitude. His strong features, massive forehead, eyes and nose, leap off the canvas.
One of my favorite objects in the show is a rare daguerreotype, a little glass plate nearly six inches by four inches. A primitive photographic image of an outdoor abolitionist gathering in Cazenovia, N.Y., in August 1850 shines on the surface. By any standard, this is an unusual survivor of early photography. (By comparison, the oldest exterior view known to exist of the Baltimore harbor was made a year later.)
Here 33-year-old Douglass sits in a group. Maybe a dozen other faces are also evident. The women wear their bonnets tied with wide ribbons. Though it is the middle of summer, the men are all attired in white shirts and big cravats. Standing behind Douglass is Gerrit Smith, one of the abolitionist movement's important financial backers and a backer of Douglass's The North Star newspaper.
Douglass, the former Talbot County slave, appears confident and secure, almost predestined to be on that podium.
No wonder rights champion Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote after she'd attended one of his orations:
"He stood there like an African prince, majestic in his wrath, as with wit, satire, and indignation he graphically described the bitterness of slavery and the humiliation of subjection to those who . . . were inferior to himself.
"Thus it was that I first saw Frederick Douglass, and wondered that any mortal man should have ever tried to subjugate a being with such talents, intensified with the love of liberty."
Douglass learned to read and write as a young man in Fells Point and while a slave, practiced the trade of a ship's caulker. Dressed as a sailor, he boarded a train at the President Street Station, escaped, and wound up settling in New Bedford, Mass., where he became involved with anti-slavery societies.
"Among New Bedford's most startling pluses for someone accustomed to the mores of southern racism was the revelation that white and black children attended the same schools," writes author Frederick S. Voss in the excellent catalog ($14.95 Smithsonian Institution Press) that accompanies the show.
"Douglass was shocked almost beyond belief when also told that a black man might, if so inclined, seek public office. But Douglass soon learned that although he had much experience as a ship's caulker in Baltimore, the color of his skin shut him out of that trade in New Bedford," Voss writes.
The show also includes a number of portraits of other personalities of the Douglass era, including his two wives, Anna Murray Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Henry Highland Garnet and John Brown.
The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, F and 7th streets, N.W., runs through Nov. 19.