Coda: Frederick Douglass and the Wild Songs of Revolution

Abstract

Examining the writings of Frederick Douglass, Michael Boyden’s coda traces how the former slave’s political vision developed as he observed and came into contact with other revolutionary projects and events such as the fight for Irish liberation and the Revolutions of 1848, which echoed the antislavery struggle in the United States. The essay also points to future directions for research underscoring the importance of embodied practices in disseminating revolutionary ideas as, for example, in the reenactments performed in the “die-in” protests that have spread across the world in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.