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  • A Literary Biography of Frederick Douglass: A Study of Interracial Friendship
  • Brian Barnes (bio)
Robert S. Levine. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. 373pp. Notes and index. $29.95

Robert Levine begins The Lives of Frederick Douglass with a quotation from Douglass’ third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881): “It will be seen that in these pages I have lived several lives as one: first, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life of conflict and battle; and, fifthly, the life of victory, if not complete, at least assured” (p. 2). Yet despite a life that spanned most of the nineteenth century, Levine points out, Douglass has come to be most associated with his first autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Levine asks why Douglass is known primarily for this text, even though it was but the first of his three autobiographies, covers little of his life as a free man, and was quickly revised and then replaced by successive works.

It is tempting to believe that the answer to this question is quite simple: in the classroom, where most people undoubtedly encounter the text today, the Narrative is a wonderful tool for studying both slavery and abolitionism; it is accessible to students of all levels, yet also rich enough to challenge all; and it is inexpensive and widely available. But Levine’s point that those seeking to understand Douglass’ life and work must look beyond the Narrative is very well taken. Douglass knew that his life—and sometimes his very body, or image—was a powerful denunciation of slavery and white supremacy. Accordingly, Douglass made his own life his primary text, and over the course of his long career as a public figure he revised and reimagined that text to denounce these injustices. Levine’s project is a literary biography that examines Douglass’ many autobiographical writings and speeches with an emphasis on “their performative dimension, the ways in which Douglass revises and crafts those works for audiences at particular historical moments” (p. 28). By reading the texts in this way, Levine hopes to find the real Douglass. The result is often enlightening. [End Page 254]

Levine first considers Douglass’ Narrative, and his relationship with William Lloyd Garrison, its publisher, in light of the influential argument by John Sekora. Sekora argued that the fugitive slave narrative was not an “Afro-American genre” because “white interrogation, not black storytelling, brings order to the narration.” Black messages might be heard in the narratives, but they were contained within a “white envelope,” which both constrained and legitimized them for a white audience.1 Douglass seemed to affirm this view with his own words after he fell out with Garrison. In his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass wrote that the Garrisonians had instructed him to merely describe slavery, and let them “take care of the philosophy” (p. 38). The grievances Douglass had were real: white Garrisonians could be rigidly dogmatic, wished to keep Douglass under their control, and sometimes behaved in an undeniably racist manner. But by examining Douglass’ writing and speeches from his Garrisonian period, Levine argues persuasively that Douglass and Garrison’s relationship was initially more mutual and collaborative than he later represented it. Douglass was “profoundly analytical” (p. 39) while working for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and at times he appeared to supply his Garrisonian colleagues with the philosophy, rather than the other way around. For example, Levine points out that Douglass compares himself to a revolutionary Patrick Henry in the Narrative, and both Garrison and Wendell Phillips, in their introductions to the Narrative, endorse Douglass’ analysis of his own revolutionary character. Perhaps, Levine concludes, “the white envelope may not be so white after all” (p. 51). At the time that Douglass alleged that the Garrisonians insisted that he leave the philosophy to them, he had not only become disenchanted with their behavior, but also convinced that political action and even revolutionary violence, as opposed to mere moral suasion, would be required to end slavery. His claim about the Garrisonians, then, may...

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