The family of abolitionist Frederick Douglass will be celebrating his 208th birthday this weekend at the Waterfowl Building in Easton. It will mark the launch of the Frederick Douglass Society of African American History, Culture and Affairs. But as Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz reports there have long been two sides to this historic family.
RUSH: Frederick Douglass is one of the most prominent names in the Eastern Shore. The former slave escaped to become one of the most prominent abolitionists of his time, but there were some of his descendants who did not realize their own connections to the great orator. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz has the story. Terrence Bailey Sr. is a 50-year-old disabled veteran and truck driver in Denton, Maryland. It wasn't until he was in his early thirties that he discovered that Frederick Douglass' mother Harriet Bailey, is his six times great grandmother. Like hundreds, if not thousands, of Eastern Shore natives, Bailey is a descendant of Douglas's brother Perry, not Douglas directly, but it's all in the family. Bailey calls the famous champion of black freedom, uncle Frederick.
BAILEY: I addressed his name as if he was standing in the room.
DIAZ: There had always been rumors, but obstacles as well.
BAILEY: I kept hearing rumors about my great-grandmother Pearl being related to Frederick Douglass and whatnot. So I went and I asked one of my uncles, uncle Jesse, who was a Korean War veteran that won a Purple heart, and I asked somebody, he said, no, that's not a rumor, that's true. He said, the only reason why it's not documented is because I don't know how to use a computer.
DIAZ: Part of it was protectiveness and a hesitation to look into a painful history.
BAILEY: There was so much hurt and what have you from slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow and whatnot, that a lot of black families don't like looking into the past. They took that as a way of trying to protect us from certain things. I know our cousins, the Harriet Tubman family, we all were raised on the hill in Easton. Our cousins who were the Ross's, the Harriet Tubman's, nieces and nephews, they weren't allowed to talk about it outside their house. They knew they were given information, but the kids, they would be in big trouble, and they talked about it outside the house because the elders felt like the youth would be targeted, especially in Talbot county if you went around saying who your family was related to. So a lot of the elders felt it is best that it was not passed on.
DIAZ: There was also division among the families, particularly between Douglass's direct descendants, mostly up north where Douglas fled and those descending from his brother; many of them still scattered around the Eastern Shore.
BAILEY: It's two different sides. There's one side that knew who they were and knew the family lineage or whatnot, and so they had pride. So they went to college. They stayed out of trouble. They dabbled in the arts. They did a lot of things. Then there's the other side that knew nothing about it and didn't have that level of pride. Got into trouble, got into drugs, got into a whole lot of things.
DIAZ: In an effort to unite their legacy, Bailey is helping spearhead a gala; a 208th Frederick Douglass birthday celebration on February 14th at the Waterfowl Building in Easton. It also will be the launch of the Frederick Douglass Society of African-American history, culture, and Affairs. The hope is also to bring together legacy families of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dr. James Still, Alex Haley, Bishop Alexander Wayman, Nat Turner, and Malcolm X.
BAILEY: At no time in American history have these historical black families ever come together to form one organization. They may have worked together during civil rights, reconstruction, whatever, but never under one organization. This is the first organization of its kind in the nation's history.
DIAZ: For Terrence Bailey, it means not only unity, but continuing Frederick Douglass's struggle.
BAILEY: My worry about his legacy and black history on our whole is that the fact that black history is under attack severely as far as the books, we've had an attack on the African-American Museum in DC. Everything that that Frederick Douglass said and did, and everything that Martin Luther King [Jr.] said and did a lot of things that Malcolm X said and did... Medgar Evers, James Baldwin, every last one of them. Everything they said then is relevant now.
DIAZ: For Delmarva Public Media, this is Kevin Diaz.
