Mr. Douglass’s hair was more silver than when she last saw him. Harriet lifted a hand to her own hair. Hers was changing, too.
He bore a heavy burden. He had escaped from slavery in Maryland and made his home in the North for many years now. If he remained silent, there was a good chance he might remain free. But he was not free, he said, until all were free—slaves and black freemen. He risked his life and freedom to bring attention to the plight of others, even fighting for women, including white women, to have the right to vote.
But it was not just others, not just those who were apathetic or slaveholders, whom he challenged. Frederick challenged her. Each time she conversed with him, she was surprised at how brilliant he was—surprised and ashamed that she was surprised. Her cheeks burned, even now, with the private embarrassment, embarrassment at her epiphany that she had expected less of him simply because of the color of his skin.
She knew he was a human being, a man created and loved by God. But somehow she bore diminished expectations. She did not expect him to reason so well, to speak so well, or to write so well—he had edited the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society’s collection Autographs for Freedom, which contained William Lloyd Garrison’s work, Henry’s work, and hers. She was too ashamed of her thoughts to share them with anyone, even Calvin. But they were there just the same.
If she had not conversed with him, she would never have known how exceptional he was, nor would she have recognized her own shortcomings. He had proven to be a thoughtful, capable man full of insight. In addition to author, respected orator, and editor, Douglass also was now a newspaper publisher.
He was a man of his own opinion and provided sound reason and argument. He was independent of thought, so much so that it appeared he might be parting ways with his friend William Lloyd Garrison. William now espoused abandoning both the Constitution and the Church; both, he felt, had been bloodied and rendered useless by slavery. Douglass believed both could be redeemed.
In the pulpit, Henry clutched his heart. “No man knows true happiness till he has learned how to love.” The crowd cheered, and Frederick Douglass tapped his cane on the floor.
Without Frederick Douglass, she might never have met fugitive slaves like Henry Bibb, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. Without him and others, she might never have heard the stories—and each story made her life richer.
Without Douglass’s association, she might never have read the works written by the hands of black authors like William Wells Brown or Douglass himself. Why should she read them? What could their broken phrases and buffoonery, their clumsiness with language, have to offer her? Harriet was surprised at what she discovered.
It seemed impossible to her now, but there was a time when they and their thoughts were strangers to her, except for caricatures in her mind. Without Mr. Douglass, she might never have known that God had given the gift of elegant thought and word to His black children. She might never have read their beautiful prose and poetry and acknowledged that it was inspired by God. Their words were cousins to her own, sometimes offering lance and balm to places she had not known were tender.
Without Mr. Douglass’s influence, she might never have shared a meal with a Negro—not as servant but as equally welcomed guests at the table. Certainly they would not have been welcomed at her father’s house. As she observed them reading and taking part in debates, Harriet wondered who the refugees might have become but for slavery.
Challenged by Mr. Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others, Harriet had come to realize that even she, with her good intentions and moral upbringing, had been poisoned by slavery’s lies. Slavery denied that it was the cause of the slaves’ condition—their poverty, their illiteracy. But by associating with fugitive slaves, she was learning to view them as people no different from she or her brother.
Perhaps the worst sin of slavery was the stunting of so many lives, seeds unable to blossom into what they might have been.
In the not too distant past, she had viewed the enslaved Negroes paternally: She must speak for them and protect them as creatures inherently incapable of certain higher thoughts and feelings—people entitled to freedom, but childlike, in need of care and unable to determine what was best for themselves.
As the music from the Plymouth Church organ swelled, she looked around the sanctuary, at Henry, and then back at Frederick Douglass. Before him, she had lived her life smelling only rare lilies and white roses.
Knowing him, and the other refugees, had turned the granite under her feet to sand; she often found herself tilting from side to side and even pitching forward.
She had not expected to find them as she. She had seen herself and her brother as champions of the lowly.
When the Negroes refused her thoughts, her gifts, or her offerings, she was at first angered by their hubris and then embarrassed by her own. There were times, she realized, when she felt betrayed and jealous that the hand of Providence might have blessed them with some insight He did not originally bestow upon her. She had devoted her life to God, and her face warmed with the thought that He might have given them some favor He had not given her. Then she was ashamed of her emotions. She was surprised to find pride hidden in her bosom.
She was ashamed to acknowledge that she had thought herself at least a little better. She was prepared to teach, not to be taught. She was prepared to lead, not to be led. Harriet had been prepared to give, not receive. She thought she needed nothing from them. But perhaps it was she who most needed the gifts that they in their poverty offered to her. She had never suspected that she was the needy one and they the ones chosen to give. How could she have lived so long and so near people all her life and known so little about them? How could she have known so little about herself?
Through association with Frederick Douglass and the other refugees, Henry’s and her lives had been enriched. Through their efforts for the cause of enslaved Negroes, they had been transformed from an impoverished preacher’s children—he into the most famous man in America and she from a poor theologian’s wife into a celebrated author of means welcomed at royal tables. But the greatest changes had been wrought inside: Their challenges had taught her to love.
Frederick and the others had become her teachers. They had challenged and improved her writing. They had helped improve her heart.
She tried to imagine the faces of slaves she had passed on the street and to imagine what she might have missed. She imagined what treasure might have been hidden there.
Harriet had had a great deal of schooling. She had taught; she was well read and an esteemed author. Yet Douglass reminded her that she had much to learn about others… and about herself. “Study to shew thyself approved.” Harriet was willing to learn.
Frederick Douglass leaned forward in his seat, his eyes intent on her brother.
Henry stepped toward the front of the pulpit. “To gain true happiness, man must learn how to love. How to love, not a little, but a great deal; how to love, not occasionally, but so that he is tied up by it; he is in bondage to it, it rules him.”
He turned and walked toward them. Now Henry stood among the people. “For the only slave on God’s earth that needs no compassion and pity is the slave of love.”