Frederick Douglass knew how to enthrall, inspire a crowd

s special edition marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War on sale April 11-March 16. Like King, Douglass was famed for his oratory powers. A newspaper reporting on a Douglass address wrote: "Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence."

In 1883, following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, Douglass called on those powers in decrying it: "This decision has inflicted a heavy calamity upon seven millions of the people of this country, and left them naked and defenseless against the action of a malignant, vulgar, and pitiless prejudice."

The ruling opened the doors to Jim Crow — America's apartheid system that would hold sway for the next 80 years.

Victoria Wolcott, interim director of New York's Frederick Douglass Institute in Rochester, called the period from 1883 through 1900 the "lowest period of race relations in America."

In the South, blacks who had tasted freedom during Reconstruction, including voting hundreds of African Americans to elected offices, were having those freedoms systematically stripped away.

"It was Douglass who during this period to the end of his life works tirelessly to keep the legacy of Reconstruction and the resistance of African Americans, both during the (Civil) war and during the Reconstruction period, alive," Wolcott said. She said the history of that time penned by Douglass was taught in black homes and schools and served as a bridge between the Civil War and the civil rights actions of the future.

In 1963, 80 years after Douglass warned of the consequences of the Supreme Court's decision, King would deliver his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech challenging the very evils unleashed by that 1883 ruling. As with Douglass, Wolcott said, presidents and white politicians constantly turned to King for advice.

"But I think Douglass was better on the issues. His outlook was more expansive and inclusive," Wolcott said, while noting that toward the end of his life King began to champion the concerns of women and children living in poverty.

"From the beginning, in the 1840s, Douglass was very supportive of women and the suffrage movement. He was supportive at a time when it was considered outlandish. He was very consistent on that."

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