Speaker 1: The women's right movement thinks this is the movement for universal suffrage. Mr. Douglas is willing to take the step of Universal Male suffrage. He is an advocate for women's suffrage. For universal Suffrage.
Speaker 1: But he thinks the only thing that your going - that they are going to get at that moment is universal Male suffrage. Thinks once you started get this balling rolling. It's going to keep expanding over time. So he splits with the Women's rights movement at that point. So he is going to um He is gonna - He was willing to come in conflict with folks.
Speaker 1: He has a pretty unique position, at that moment in history. He is going to be very well known because of the abolition movement. Cause when the abolitionists find him and if they are in a moment when they are looking to really try and become a national organization. And when they get Frederick Douglas, these guys are great at PR and the thing that they want -
Speaker 1: They are going to absolutely make sure that everybody in the country knows whose Frederick Douglass is, sees Frederick Douglass, and gets into a situation which Frederick Douglass is going to be on stage or under a tree in front of his people.
Speaker 1: Now Frederick Douglass is the one who takes it from there and carries himself beyond and eventually starts pushing the abolitionist movement. But he is going to have a national renowned that is pretty unlike anybody else's of that time. He is really very well known across the question.
Crowd Member: Was he the first African American to have a, well, I guess a court of deeds to have a position like that? Was he the first or were there others?
Speaker 1: We think the first African-American to be elected to a position was John Mercer Langston out in Ohio. He was actually friends with Douglass, he's got a little carved portrait of John Mercer Langston in his house.
Speaker 2: One interesting, in terms of being challenged. Near the end of his life, Ida Wells-Barnett, the activist most known for against lynching, she was kinda of a pretégé of Frederick Douglass' and she challenged him for not speaking out enough against lynching. And he actually that actually kinda goaded him into becoming more active against that.
Speaker 2: So he certainly, he did respond to that whenever people raised those kind of issues.
Speaker 1: He's very interested in the younger generation. Students from Howard are frequently coming over into the house. He works with Ida B. Wells and Paul Laurence Dunbar, with a lot of younger folk. Booker T. Washington comes by the house, several times. Some of our best descriptions of the grounds come from Booker T. Washington.
Crowd Member: Isn't he... Brooker's right here.
Speaker 1: Yes! The portrait gallery has done a great job on putting Mr. Washington right around the corner.
Speaker 3: And later this month the portrait gallery historian Jim Barber is giving a face-to-face talk about Brooker T. Washington. So if yall come back.
Crowd Member: How was his marriage to the white women he seen? Speaker 2: [[Laughter]] that was a huge controversy in D.C. I mean neither of their families approved. And her family actually they were staunch abolitionists, but they disowned her for marrying Frederick Douglass.
Crowd Member: They.. They disowned her? Speaker 2: Yes. yeah and- Crowd Member: She had no children of the marriage [
] Speaker 2: Nah, and it was actually when word got out that Frederick Douglass had taken out a marriage license, it was kinda like a little paparazzi carriage case through D.C. with reporters following him trying to figure out who he was marrying, so it was huge news! It was incredibly controversial. Yeah
Crowd Member: Since you brought that up. I had remember -