Navigating "The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake": Re-Assessing Frederick Douglass, the Orator

Although Frederick Douglass is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most powerful American orators, there remains a curious dearth of critical analysis among communications and literary scholars regarding his public addresses. This lack may be the result of Douglass' oral rhetoric (as opposed to the more widely analyzed rhetoric of his three autobiographies) being perceived and dismissed as epideictic or ceremonial in nature. An examination of the rhetorical, cultural, and racial contexts surrounding this "epideictic" labeling indicates that Douglass' oratory more accurately reflects a dramatic form of political or deliberative rhetoric — a rhetoric that deserves to be taken seriously, especially in its formation of a collective identity for African Americans within antebellum American and its potential for current, interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogical application.