Frederick Douglas/Prophet of Freedom
By David W. Blight
Published by Simon and Schuster 2018
Pages 888 Price $37.50

When we think of turbulent times we do think of today. But our nation has survived many upheavals since its beginning when it rejected England during the American Revolution in 1776.

One of the most tragic times in American history came during the Civil War in 1861. That war did not arise overnight. For over 100 years people of color were considered slaves in America.Their daily lives were painful, especially in the South where they were needed as free laborers on plantations.

Slaves were considered property.Their families were bought and sold and separated according to the needs of plantation owners. Some plantation owners were kind but many, many, were cruel tyrants. If a slave ran away and got caught he or she could be whipped in public by the plantation owner. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves even though he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He whipped one of his slaves for running away. It was the custom. That is not an excuse. There are good customs and bad customs. Slavery was a bad custom. Slaves were considered property not human beings.

“Frederick Douglas, Prophet of Freedom” by David W. Blight is an outstanding volume that explains the life of this great  spokesman for freedom and his times in poignant detail. Douglas was born in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, the son of Harriet Bailey and possibly a white plantation owner. At the age of eleven Douglas was sent to the home of Hugh and Sophia Auld in Maryland to be a companion to their son. Sophia taught Douglas to read. That gift gave him the most powerful advantage in his life. Sophia’s husband was angry because he knew that education would lead to freedom. Later in life Douglas said, “Education and slavery were incompatible with each other.” He ran away at the age of 20 and spent 9 years as a fugitive slave subject to recapture. His great assets were that he could read, write, and speak eloquently. From 1840 to 1895 he attained fame as an abolitionist, editor, writer and speaker on equal rights.The book states,”He thought that women were truly equal and ought to have all fundamental rights, yet in his own marriage he was patriarch.”

Another theme in this book is the colorful relationship between Douglas’s public and private life. The book states, ”He married twice, first to Anna Murray Douglas a black woman born free in Maryland, who remained largely illiterate but the center of his home life for 44 years, and second to Helen Pitt Douglas, a highly educated white woman 20 years his junior and remarkable companion during his last decade.” Apparently Douglas had important friendships with women throughout his career while liberating people of color and fighting for equal rights. Two white women, Julia Griffiths from England and Ottilie Assing from Germany were important influences in his life. Most important was his family. Anna and Douglas had five children. Among them they produced twenty one grandchildren.

Douglas was briliant but he had two emotional breakdowns after exhausting lecture tours to keep his extended family financial afloat. The book states “Douglass was a many sided intellectual, an editor, a writer of essays, editorials, three autobiographies, one novel, and many speeches that were eloquent.” Scholars today are seeing Douglas as a political philosopher, a constitutional legal analyst, and an advocate of broader public education.

I was disappointed in one area of the book. I was interested in hearing more about “The North Star,” an anti slavery newspaper, which Douglas founded. It is mentioned in the book  but I wanted to read some examples of its articles, rather than  hearing more about his lengthy relations with women friends.

In conclusion, the author’s opinion is “There is no greater voice of America’s terrible transformation from slavery to freedom than Frederick Douglas.”

***
David C. Driskell, Artist and Scholar
By Julie L. McGee
Published by Pomergranate Communications 2006         
Pages 215 Price $45

David C. Driskell at 87 is an active artist, scholar, author, and guest lecturer. He lives quietly in Falmouth, Maine, where he has a home and studio and likes to garden in his spare time. His work has been shown across the nation in museums and in Maine at the Colby College Museum of Art, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art. His work also can be seen in the High Museum of Atlanta, Georgia, and the new African American Museum of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

Driskell fell in love with Maine while a student of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1952. He later became a faculty member of the School and served on the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees. In 1963 he bought a home here in Maine and has been living here during the summers for over 55 years. In the winter he lives in an old Victorian home in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he taught art at the University of Maryland, College Park as head of the art department for 27 years. He is retired now. A building at the college is named after him and focuses on African American art and artists. He still paints and uses his Falmouth home as a retreat to create.

Julie McGee, art historian and specialist in contemporary visual culture of Africa and the African diaspora, has written an encyclopedic coverage of the life of Driskell, in her book titled, “David C.Driskell, Artist and Scholar.”

This book is amazing because of its in depth study of Driskell’s life, and its fine scholarship with beautiful works of art reproduced reflecting  each period. In addition, an extensive bibliography in the back of the book including a chronology of events, awards, and different locations Driskell has lived, and books he has written, is impressive. Born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1931, Driskell, son of a Baptist minister and grandson of a slave,  went to school on scholarships and became a gifted artist, scholar, educator, and spokesman on Black culture.

Many people in Maine do not realize that Driskell is a famous artist, although he is well known in the art world. The average person would never know because he is humble, quiet, and down to earth. As a guest lecturer, he is an eloquent speaker and supports other artists of color with insight and dignity. His many books are on African American art and its growth.

The McGee book is outstanding because it shows his works from his early period to the present. Works which I liked reproduced in the book include: “House in Hyattsville,” watercolor (1978), “Jonah in the Whale,” color woodcut (1967), and “Spirits Watching,” offset lithograph, hand-colored (1986). These works show he can work in many mediums, watercolor, lithography, and woodcuts. They also reveal his range of style. Most of his work is abstract but his early work was representational. He also works in oils, acrylics, and loves encaustics. Encaustics is a process in which melted wax is mixed over paint and the work has a unique texture.

An outstanding work in the book is titled “Pines at Falmouth,” an acrylic created in 1961 in Maine. Nature is a subject Driskell often returns to, as well as African masks. Another wonderful semi -abstract work can be seen in the book titled, “Jazz Singer (Lady of Leisure, Fox), an oil and collage created in 1974, which is beautiful. Driskell loves music especially the work of Wynton Marsalis. A favorite work in the book is a black and white woodcut of his wife titled, “Festival Thelma,” created in 1966. Thelma and David Driskell have been married 67 years.

Two large oval creations in the book are stained glass windows which Driskell created in 1996 for the Deforest Chapel at Talladega College in Alabama. Another round stained glass window was created in 1991 titled, “Color Study for East window,” at Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington D.C. This book is a treasure uniting all the forms of creativity that Driskell has mastered.

A beautiful section of the book shows some spontaneous illustrations from a sketchbook of the artist including sketches of his travels and his garden in Maine and Maryland.

Photographs of friends, mentors and awards throughout his life make the book very interesting. A favorite photo is of Driskell receiving the National Humanities Medal award from President William Clinton in 2000.

Julie McGee captures the essence of Driskell in this scholarly book for art students, art educators, and the general public interested in  contemporary African American art.
A work of Driskell’s can be seen here in Maine at the Portland Museum of Art on the third floor titled, “Pine and Moon,”(1971). His work also can be seen at the Greenhut Galleries in Portland.

Pat Davidson Reef is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. She received her Masters Degree at the University of Southern Maine.She taught English and Art History at Catherine McAuley High for many years.She now teaches at the University of Southern Maine in Portland in the  Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Classic Films. She recently wrote a children’s book,”Dahlov Ipcar Artist, and is now writing another children’s book “Bernard Langlais Revisited.”