The Talbot County Free Library, the Frederick Douglass Honor Society and Washington College's Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience are proud to welcome Professors Nicole King and Celeste-Marie Bernier to the Talbot County Free Library Meeting Room in Easton for a conversation about the inspirational personal letters written by Anna Murray Douglass and her daughter, Annie Douglass

A mother and daughter freedom-fighting team, they were leading members of a family liberation movement. All their lives, they worked as heroic Underground Railroad liberators, civil rights leaders, and human rights campaigners side by with husband and father, Frederick Douglass, daughter and sister, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, and sons and brothers, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., and Frederick Douglass.

Anna Murray and Annie Douglass were freedom-fighters, liberators, and activists in their own right.

Professor Nicole King (she/her) is Associate Professor of American Literature, Exeter College, University of Oxford, UK She is a scholar of U.S., Caribbean, and Black British literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow in English Literature at Exeter College. She is the author of Rage in Caribbean Women’s Writing (2026) co-authored with Dr. Ana Nenadović and C.L.R. James and Creolization: Circles of Influence (2001). Professor King is currently writing her third book, Black Childhood in Modern African American Fiction and researching her family’s intertwined history with the public libraries of New York City.

Professor Celeste-Marie Bernier (she/her) is Professor of United States and Atlantic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is a family historian at Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and an Honorary International Member of the Frederick Douglass Honor Society. She is the author and editor of a forthcoming ten-book series, Douglass Family Lives: The Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass Family Biography and Collected Works including Anna Murray Douglass: A Revolutionary Family Life in Documents (July, 2026) and Anna Murray Douglass: Biography of a Revolutionary, forthcoming November 2026.