BOOK REVIEW
Frederick Douglass Novel (Photo – sidneymorrison.com)
Novels on historic figures are diligently and intently researched. Sidney Morrison, the author of Frederick Douglass, A Novel, grew up loving him.
By Esther Bradley-DeTally
Sidney is a writer, a researcher, and an avid promoter of everything written which shows authenticity and unknown information. This reviewer knows of Morrison’s talent, and ethics as a historian, writer, former principal, former teacher. I went for it.
The book seemed the heft of The Oxford Dictionary, but my curiosity knew no bounds. In 1844 Frederick Douglass had been lecturing for several years. William Lloyd Garrison, an antislavery figure of prominence, noted for his fiery passion, discovered Douglass’ presence on the scene. Douglass. a newly escaped slave from the South, had traveled to freedom with no small amount of fear and danger. Garrison took Douglas under his wing.
A scene in the book reveals a white crowd pushed beyond belligerence, causing Douglas to prove his inheritance. He did, and it is up to the reader to read an incredibly horrifying scene.
I knew of Morrison, and I certainly knew of Douglass, and what I experienced reading this riveting story cemented itself within my heart and brain. What were Morrison’s descriptions and details? Douglas, a man, stubborn beyond measure, profound with words that reached the sky and the hearts of others, emerges from Morrison’s pen as very stubborn, beyond profound, a crowd filler if there ever was one, and also a horrifically fearful black man who escaped the South, and emerged having survived fear and trembling from a culture which lusted after horrors inflicted on slaves, into a relatively welcoming group of people influenced by William Garrison.
Douglass intended to write an autobiography, naming names of abusers, places, families, i.e., the persecutors. But, he would not reveal the method of his escape. “All he had was his word.” (p. 60)
His early life reveals meeting Anna, an illiterate woman, a cook and a domestic servant, who was not raised as a slave. Anna would be his pillar, and they married. They would get to New York and Philadelphia, and New Bedford, Mass., the final destination.
Douglass reveals the innards of a man whose innards seemed filled with a tensile steel. He meets many, many women, travels to London, speak from the pulpits in England and Scotland, even those British churches which remained affiliated to American churches still supporting slavery. Douglass scolded them with his skilled orator’s polish.
This novel breathes passion, life and death struggles, always an available mountain to climb every day. The Civil War, white superiority, meeting Lincoln, all of this mayhem and his determination caused his survival. Stubbornness, his stubbornness with anyone. He was always his own man, despite the society’s forces which seemed unstoppable.
This book is a masterpiece of telling and showing. A must for this current and future generation to inhale. Gratitude to Sidney Morrison. May the name of Frederick Douglass be shouted out over our lands for eons to come!
Esther Bradley-DeTally is a writer residing in Altadena.
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