Frederick Douglass: America's REAL Captain Marvel
"You absolutely must
go visit Frederick Douglass's house while you're here," said the friend I
was staying with in Washington DC. "They've turned it into a
museum. It's totally amazing." http://www.frederick-douglass-heritage.org/cedar-hill-house/
"Define amazing," I replied. "Amazing like a baby's first steps?
Amazing like America's brutal and un-Christian foreign policy? Or
amazing like Captain Marvel?"
"More like Captain Marvel," replied my friend Wow! Sign me up!
So I took the Metro to Anacosta, trudged through yet
another of Washington's rapidly-gentrifying ghettos and finally found
Frederick Douglass's old-fashioned home perched high on a hill
overlooking DC. "Douglass was born a slave," said our tour guide. "His
mother had been sold down-river. He was whipped and beaten and
starved as a child; overburdened and overworked. His back was covered with deep
scars from the lashes. He stole food scraps from the Big House's
garbage just to stay alive, was given one gunny-sack a year for
clothing. No one taught him to read." Huddled naked and alone.
And yet this poor abused and tortured slave child grew up to be one of
the finest orators and statesmen in America. Sounds like a Marvel to
me!
I looked at Douglass's original piano, his original writing desk, his
parlor and his bedroom. I saw the exact spot where he suddenly
collapsed of a heart attack and died at age 74. (Good grief how I hate
it when people use that phony term "passed away" like somehow death
doesn't really exist if you only stop using the "D' word. But everybody
dies. Stop trying to sugar-coat it. When I die, I wanna be D.E.A.D.
-- not just "passed")
Douglass died an honorable death after living an honorable life. "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong," he said.
Douglass died an honorable death after living an honorable life. "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong," he said.
Our little tour group tromped up Douglass's back stairs and tromped down
his front ones. "How the freak did he do it?" I asked our guide with
tears in my eyes. "How did he even survive being a slave -- let alone
become an advisor to presidents, an ambassador to Haiti and one of the
greatest men of the 19th Century?" The guy must really have possessed
superpowers.
And Douglass was also the first Freedom Rider. For over 60 years he
constantly fought against Jim Crow laws in the brutally-segregated and
un-Christian South. "Dozens of times he would buy first-class tickets
on railroads, attempt to take his seat and then be cruelly beaten, spit
upon, handcuffed and/or jailed every single time." Can Captain Marvel
do that?
On the very day that he died, America's real Captain Marvel gave a
young Black man some very good advice. "Wherever you see injustice
happening, then agitate. Agitate. Agitate." And, boy howdy, do we
have a hecka lot of injustice in America right now too. And Douglass's most
prescient advice to those of us today who also love justice? "Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will".
It's time that we too demand justice as well. Jesus did it. Nathan Hale did it. Crazy Horse did it. Douglass
did it. Julian Assange did it. A.O.C. does it. We can too.
"Agitate. Agitate. Agitate." https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55991-rsn-the-julian-assange-case-revealing-war-crimes-is-not-a-crime
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