How the Right Co-Opts Frederick Douglass

David W. Blight, a professor of history at Yale and chair of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center, is the author of the forthcoming book “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.” He wrote the following Op-Ed that appeared in the February 13 issue of The New York Times.

Two hundred years ago, one of the most important Americans was born close to the Tuckahoe River on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Frederick Bailey didn’t know the exact date of his birth, so he chose Feb. 14. Twenty years later, when he escaped from slavery, he became Frederick Douglass. By the time of his death in 1895, he had become one of the greatest orators and writers of the century.

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