Frederick Douglass, April 5, 1847
On a day when thousands of people around this country are protesting loudly against cruel, harmful, and even illegal government actions that are driven to a great extent by racial and cultural animosity, we can draw inspiration and resolve from Frederick Douglass’s response to the racially motivated mistreatment he endured on his return journey from England beginning on April 5, 1847, one hundred and seventy-seven years ago.
In August 1845 Douglass sailed to Britain. (We will highlight the story of that journey next August.) For twenty months Douglass traveled throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, lecturing about the evils of slavery to great acclaim. In the spring of 1847, he tells us in his autobiography,
…while in London, I was careful to purchase a ticket, and secure a berth for returning home, in the “Cambria”—the steamer in which I left the United States—paying therefor the round sum of forty pounds and nineteen shillings sterling. This was first class cabin fare. But on going aboard the Cambria, I found that the Liverpool agent had ordered my berth to be given to another, and had forbidden my entering the saloon!
Before the ship sailed, Douglass alerted the British press to this “contemptible conduct” and “took the occasion to expose the disgusting tyranny, in the columns of the London Times.” The matter became a cause célèbre in both the British and American press. As a result, Douglass tells us, “Mr. Cunard came out in a letter to the public journals, assuring them of his regret at the outrage, and promising that the like should never occur again on board his steamers; and the like, we believe, has never since occurred on board the steamships of the Cunard line.” Unfortunately Cunard’s apology did not come in time to prevent Douglas from being subjected to the degrading conditions of an enforced segregation throughout the fifteen-day voyage. Lest we dismiss this experience too lightly, Douglass concludes the narrative portion the second version of his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), with a powerful evocation of the psychological effects the imposition of segregation has upon a person:
It is not very pleasant to be made the subject of such insults, but if all such necessarily resulted as this one did, I should be very happy to bear, patiently, many more than I have borne, of the same sort. Albeit, the lash of proscription, to a man accustomed to equal social position, even for a time, as I was, has a sting for the soul hardly less severe than that which bites the flesh and draws blood from the back of the plantation slave. It was rather hard, after having enjoyed nearly two years of equal social privileges in England, often dining with gentlemen of great literary, social, political, and religious eminence—never, during the whole time, having met with a single word, look, or gesture, which gave me the slightest reason to think my color was an offence to anybody—now to be cooped up in the stern of the “Cambria,” and denied the right to enter the saloon, lest my dark presence should be deemed an offense to some of my democratic fellow-passengers. The reader will easily imagine what must have been my feelings.