Frederick Douglass lived in Rochester for 25 years,
and during his lifetime, the abolitionist, social reformer, speaker, and writer
was a prominent figure in American political action and had important
discussions about race and slavery with President Lincoln.
For much of the recent past, however, there’s been a disconnect in what the larger Rochester public knows about
Douglass. But thanks to a large, diverse group of local organizations, that’s
changing. More than 50 arts, cultural, educational, and civic groups — from
large institutions to small neighborhood associations — have planned a year of
events to celebrate Douglass’s life and work in observance of the 200th anniversary
of his birth.
The Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commemoration Committee
unveiled the events Thursday afternoon during a ceremony at Hochstein School of
Music and Dance, the former church where a massive funeral service for Douglass
was held. Officials of the City of Rochester and Monroe County also proclaimed
2018 as “The Year of Frederick Douglass.”
In a lot of ways, committee organizers say, the Bicentennial
Committee and the year’s worth of events represent the
culmination of long-building concern about the lack of awareness of Douglass’s
legacy and Rochester’s place in his life. Born into bondage in 1818 — he chose
February 14 as his birthday — Douglass escaped to freedom in 1838, and lived in
Rochester from 1847 to 1872, publishing his newspaper, The North Star, here.
The Bicentennial Committee’s efforts, led by Rochester
Community Television and Rochester Contemporary Art Center, are part of a
larger project, “Re-Energizing the Legacy of Frederick Douglass,” which will include
an art exhibit and the erection of statues of Douglass in public spaces.
It’s extraordinary, says RCTV General Manager Carvin Eison, that “so many organizations, institutions, and
individuals in this community have come together to celebrate Frederick
Douglass and the legacy of what Frederick Douglass means, and to attempt to
apply his ideology, his thinking, his writings, to the problems that we face as
a community.”
The city dedicated its New Year’s Eve fireworks display to
Douglass and is using a new Flower City logo incorporating his portrait. David
Shakes and his theater company, The North Star Players, will perform “No
Struggle, No Progress” at MuCCC, January 16 to 20;
the Rochester Oratorio Society will perform “Frederick Douglass at 200” on
February 16; and the Eastman Museum will host a lecture on Douglass and
photography on February 10. The city is hosting more information about the
committee and a calendar of bicentennial events at
cityofrochester.gov/frederickdouglass200.
Work on the “Re-Energizing the Legacy of Frederick Douglass”
project got started last year, Eison says, when there
was a flash celebration at Douglass’s grave site in Mt. Hope Cemetery for his
199th birthday. Eison and Bleu Cease, Rochester
Contemporary’s executive director and another of the Douglass celebration
organizers, had worked together in 2014 when RCTV and RoCo
hosted the video project “Question Bridge” and decided to work together again
to plan a commemoration of Douglass’s 200th birthday.
Eison says he just wanted to learn
more about Douglass himself. He began doing research on Douglass and in the
process met Ken Morris Jr., a descendent of both Douglass and Booker T.
Washington and co-founder of the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives. The
support to launch a large celebration broadened out, from local arts and
cultural organizations, the city, county, and media, and civic and social
justice groups.
“We decided it would be a great collaboration for the
creative community,” Eison says, “to try and do
something, to take the reins and attempt to celebrate and use this bicentennial
to examine where we are in the world.”
The “Re-Energizing” project will also center on two
arts-related events: “No Soil Better,” an exhibition at RoCo
of contemporary artists interpreting Douglass’s legacy, and a series of life-sized
statues, replicas of the Sidney W. Edwards sculpture of Douglass in Highland
Park, that will be placed around Rochester. The 6-foot-tall statues will be
made by artist John David Vincent and placed in locations significant to
Douglass’s life, and there are plans for a self-guided walking and driving tour
of the locations.
The Douglass monument, the first statue in the US dedicated
to a black person, was erected in 1899 in front of Rochester’s New York
Central Railroad Station. But in 1941, the statue was moved to Highland Park.
“I love the notion that the first civic-funded statue of an
African-American in the country was at the center of the city,” says Roco’s Bleu Cease. “People were on a train coming
through Rochester in the 1900’s. They would see a statue of an African-American
man. It’s a profound bit of Rochester history. And I always felt it could be
celebrated more.”
This spring, the county will move the monument from its place
in Highland Bowl to a more visible park location,at the corner of South Avenue and Robinson Drive. Before
the move, on the evening of February 14, RIT’s Big Shot team — a nighttime
photography project — will organize a “Shine a Light on Douglass” event to
create a photo that will be hung in RoCo’s “No Soil
Better” exhibition.
The “No Soil Better” exhibit will be up from
February 2 through March 18 and will feature works by a range of artists to
“update” Douglass’s legacy and “engage with today’s artists through today’s
technologies and techniques and media to make new, contemporary monuments,”
Cease says.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been edited to update the number of organizations participating in the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commemoration Committee.
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2018.
Left off the above list is a talk by Dr. Leigh Fought on her book, “Women in the World of Frederick Douglass”, to be given at the Rochester Public Library on February 10th at 1 pm.
Can someone do a better job of explaining the logic of incurring the expense, and more importantly the potential for damage, of moving the Douglass statue a piddling 250 feet? The claim that it will be a more visible park location may be true for those driving by at 30 mph, but it will be a far less aesthetically-pleasing location than the current site for those actually walking by to view the monument
That statue needs to be placed on the corner of State & Main Street downtown, where Frederick Douglass would stand daily, handing out his papers to anyone who would accept, and talk about his efforts to those working downtown – which considering the times – is phenomenal in it’s own right. There are photos of his home, and Federal Grants should be sought to pay to rebuilt the house to scale and put it on the Federal Registry. Block grants could help to rebuild the neighborhoods around his original home, and build areas of local historical significance in a “Freedom Trail” throughout Rochester and our surrounding communities to highlight and historically document the caliber and importance of Rochester’s role in Civil Rights throughout the nation. Perhaps if our young people realize we have so much to be proud of, they may start to emulate those same inspirations for a future we can all be proud of.