ETHS hosts Family Action Network event with David Blight on January 25
Jan 16, 2019 3:42pm CT
The following announcement is provided by Family Action Network.
“Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom”
Friday, January 25, 2019, 7:00 PM
Evanston Township High School Auditorium
1600 Dodge Ave., Evanston, 60201
“Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” (book cover, left) by author David Blight (right). Images from www.familyactionnetwork.net
Evanston Township High School will host “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” with David W. Blight, Ph.D., on Friday, January 25 at 7:00pm, in the school auditorium. The event, free and open to the public, is suitable for ages 12 and up. Prof. Blight will be interviewed on stage by Marcus Campbell, Ed.D., Assistant Superintendent/Principal at Evanston Township High School.
As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, often to large crowds, using his own story to condemn slavery. He broke with Garrison to become a political abolitionist, a Republican, and eventually a Lincoln supporter. By the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Douglass became the most famed and widely traveled orator in the nation. He denounced the premature end of Reconstruction and the emerging Jim Crow era. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. He sometimes argued politically with younger African Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights.
In Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, a definitive, dramatic, remarkable biography, David W. Blight, Ph.D. has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historians have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. Prof. Blight tells the fascinating story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. Douglass was not only an astonishing man of words, but a thinker steeped in Biblical story and theology. There has not been a major biography of Douglass in a quarter century, and Prof. Blight’s Frederick Douglass affords this important American the distinguished biography he deserves, one that earned “Top 10” status for 2018 from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and TIME.
Prof. Blight is a Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He began studying Douglass over 35 years ago, beginning with his dissertation on Douglass, which he completed in 1985. He has been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize. Prof. Blight is also the author or editor of a dozen books, including American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies.
ETHS is located at 1600 Dodge Ave., Evanston, 60201. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible. Guests should plan to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to 7:00pm to find parking and seats. Parking is available in the lot across from the main entrance, off of Dodge Avenue, or in the lots behind the high school. Parking is also available along Dodge Avenue according to posted City of Evanston signs.
The January 25 presentation is sponsored by Family Action Network (FAN), in partnership with Evanston Township High School D202, Chiaravalle Montessori School, Connections for the Homeless, New Trier Township High School D203, Youth and Opportunity United (Y.O.U.), and the YWCA Evanston-North Shore.
For more information about FAN events and sponsors for the 2018-19 presentations, visit www.familyactionnetwork.net.