Introduction to the Annotated Edition of Frederick Douglass's Unpublished "Slavery"

Abstract:Sometime between June of 1894 and his death in February 1895, Frederick Douglass penned a sixty-five-page essay, simply titled "Slavery." While the work was originally intended for publication in an illustrated history from Harvard Publishing Company, it has remained, until now, largely unknown in the Library of Congress archives. The essay appears here along with annotations and an introduction which situates the piece and highlights its continued relevance for modern readers. Douglass's essay speaks cogently to current concerns of continued anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence. It similarly offers new insights both for scholars of Douglass's work and for those readers attuned to the long afterlife of slavery in which we still live.