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In
this
time
where
opportunities
(e.g.,
Affirmative
Action)
and
matters
of
justice
(e.g.,
voting
rights)
for
African
Americans
are
being
eroded
in
the
United
States
in
what
looks
to
be
a
continuation
of
the
racism
that
sprang
from
the
slavery
that
brought
on
the
American
Civil
War,
the
Smithsonian
Portrait
Gallery
has
mounted
an
exhibition
focused
primarily
on
photographs
of
the
celebrated
Abolitionist
Frederick
Douglass
(1818-1895).
The
Steiny
Road
Poet
visited One Life: Frederick Douglass on July 10, 2023.
The
exhibition
also
put
her
in
mind
of
Gertrude
Stein's
struggles
to
overcome
her
station
as
a
woman
and
her
ambition
to
make
a
contribution
to
mankind
of
extraordinary
accomplishment.
DOUGLASS FROM SLAVE TO LEARNED ORATOR
Douglass was a bi-racial man, probably the offspring of Aaron Anthony, a
Talbot County, Maryland, plantation manager or of Anthony's son-in-law
Thomas Auld. Douglass' enslaved mother Harriet Bailey named her son
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. A ledger displayed in this
exhibition and kept by Aaron Anthony (discovered in 1980 by biographer
Dickson Preston) notes this child's name and birth year as 1818.
Throughout his life, Douglass estimated 1817 as his birth year.
The exhibition tells the museum-goer that Douglass escaped slavery at the
age of 20 and subsequently changed his name to Douglass.
Besides his many distinguished photographs, we see photographs of Anna
Murray, the free Black woman who he married in 1838 and had five
children with, and Helen Pitts, the white activist he married in 1884, two
years after Anna's death.
Although there is a copy of his autobiography: Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, there are few
details in the extensive texts accompanying photographs and artifacts that
answer questions like how he learned to read.
With a little research, Steiny discovered that Baltimore is where Frederick
Bailey learned the alphabet from a sister-in-law to Thomas Auld. It is also
where he met his future wife-to-be, Anna Murray. Once he learned the
alphabet, Frederick Bailey was able to teach himself how to read. In the
exhibition, we are told that in his first six years of freedom, he read Byron,
Shakespeare, Emerson, and Milton. He appeared so learned that his
audiences did not believe he had ever been a slave.
DOUGLASS EXHIBITION TAKEAWAYS
The takeaways from the exhibit are that Douglass had perfected the art of
being a striking photographic subject. He dressed well, looked at the
camera, and was able to hold that pose for the length of time it took in
those early days of photography. He also counseled Abraham Lincoln on
the eve of Lincoln's reelection to look straight at the camera. As a humble
man, Lincoln never looked into the camera, but he listened to Douglass'
argument that doing so made an authoritative image that would help him
win the election. Douglass was the leading male voice for women's suffrage
in the United States. His influence on abolishing slavery and women's
rights was substantial.
THE BALTIMORE CONNECTION
Like Douglass, Gertrude Stein also had an important connection to
Baltimore which had a major impact on her adult life. Baltimore is where
her maternal relatives had settled after immigrating from Europe. At
sixteen and ward of her older brother Michael after their parents died,
Gertrude and her sister Bertha were sent in 1892 to Baltimore to their
Aunt Fanny Keyser Bachrach's home. Fanny's husband David Bachrach
was an established photographer who had his niece Gertrude sit for a
coming-of-age "Gibbson Girl" photograph. Clearly Stein is cinched into a
very tight corset to show her waist and emphasize her fulsome bust. She is
not smiling and unlike Douglass, she is looking off to one side. She is a
female object on display for what? Maybe a possible husband?
Except Stein left Baltimore to join her brother Leo at Harvard where she
was able to earn a degree and return to Baltimore to study medicine at
Johns Hopkins. Baltimore is where Stein worked in the Black community
as an intern attending to obstetric patients.
Surely that early experience sitting for her photographer uncle set Stein up
for the portrait Pablo Picasso painted of her. In this well-known work,
Stein leans in aggressively toward the viewer. Her posture unsettled
Picasso. Stein claims she did "eighty or ninety sittings" for Picasso's
portrait of her. While she is not looking at the viewer, her large body
leaning in toward the viewer accomplishes the same authority.
SEE THE DOUGLASS EXHIBITION
One Life: Frederick Douglass opened June 16, 2023, and runs through
April 21, 2024, at the Smithsonian's Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
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