Response to Letters

Abstract

Response to Letters Leslie Leonard (bio) I am thankful once more to the editors of J19 for allowing me to continue the scholarly conversation surrounding Frederick Douglass's recently published "Slavery," and I am doubly thankful to Koritha Mitchell, Kelvin C. Black, and Jewon Woo for their responses to the piece. As I read them, I was struck by just how expertly each thinker presented sometimes wholly conflicting views such that I cannot say I disagree with any of them. Scholars of Douglass will know that his work is a haven for such contradictions; it is fitting, then, that "Slavery" and its discussion are no different. Most immediately, I am interested in the ethical issues of archive work that Mitchell deftly raises. With "Slavery" in particular—unfinished, unpublished, marked with (what I, maybe wrongfully, imagine) is a deep mournfulness at the state of things at the end of Douglass's life—I recognize the "violation" that Mitchell names. Douglass was, in so many ways, a public figure, which I suppose allows us to imagine that he was the public's figure—a collection of writings rather than a man whose permission we might require. Mitchell's nuanced understanding that this violation is both a feature and a bug of archival work strikes me as particularly relevant with Douglass's piece. To what degree do scholars wrongfully lay claim to pieces that were never intended to be shared—letters, diary entries, private and unfinished works? And how might archival work be in its own way a form of violence against those who cannot consent to the narrative we build out of these once-private writings? Although I often agree with Douglass's own declaration that "we have to do with the [End Page 33] past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future," there is something unmistakably selfish in the desire to share what isn't ours. Interestingly, Woo's response to the essay views its publication in an opposite light, as a progressive part of recovering and rediscovering Black writing to adjust a white-centered archival canon. Woo names "Slavery" as a piece as recovery—giving space to long-buried ideas. I find both perspectives to be true, and I remain conflicted as to whether I should feel pride or shame at giving the world yet another piece of Douglass. I imagine there is so little of him left that has not been given away by an extractive academy. Nonetheless, Mitchell's, Woo's, and Black's responses demonstrate that "Slavery" continues to be a radically relevant text for our own cultural moment. As Mitchell writes, the piece is a powerful reminder of something too easily (and willfully) forgotten; that it is "proactive struggle" (not decency) that engenders "anything approaching justice." Similarly, Woo notes that Douglass's essay refuses and refutes imagined ideas of progress and instead argues for another, more engaged understanding of history, one that requires constant action and resistance from readers. Black also expertly demonstrates that Douglass, in this later piece, has at long last turned readers' focus fully away from the moral betterment of white Americans toward the ability of Black Americans to "fortify" against white violence. This latter point highlights what I believe my own introduction failed to fully bring forth—that Douglass's decision to shift the narrative to Black resilience is a radical prioritization of his Black readership over appeals to white audiences. This deliberate shift in perspective on Douglass's part feels particularly relevant as the United States and American culture continue to prioritize white feelings over the realities of Black experience. The academy itself has often deployed Douglass's work because of his rhetorical appeals to white audiences; thus, his refusal of those appeals here feels particularly significant. As Black also makes clear, through his expert view of Douglass's body of work, this shift is also significant in light of Douglass's ever-changing rhetorical methodology—a methodology that Black reads in this late-in-life text as "both strategic and tragic," an indelible mark of the loss of Douglass's faith in the United States or its citizenry to appropriately contend with the continued...