On July 5, 1875, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech at Hillsdale (a part of Anacostia), in Washington, D. C. which he later titled “The Color Question.” David Blight describes it as a “withering jeremiad,” “one of the most controversial and compelling efforts of his postwar life”; “a remarkable address that was at once angry, historical, antiracist, and a confrontational appeal to black community self-reliance” (David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, 556, 557).
The gains of Reconstruction for Black people were beginning to roll back, including some supposed instances of white benevolence which had been exposed as self-interested hypocrisy. Douglass himself had just had first hand experience of this in the failing of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, which he had been brought in to try to save. Douglass was angry at the state of the country, and “was not out to make friends that day in Hillsdale” (Blight, 558).
(for more on this episode, see ““The hands are white that handle the money”: Review of Carl R. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud: A History of the Freedman’s Savings Bank“).
The exact wording of the Hillsdale speech was debated at the time. An initial version of the speech was published on July 7 in the Washington National Republican, alongside a transcription of John Mercer Langston’s speech at the same event. From the article, it appears that George Washington Williams (later author of History of the Negro Race in America, 2 volumes (1882)) was tasked with reporting the proceedings of the meeting to the press. The speech was a bombshell. Blight notes that “few of Douglass’s Reconstruction-era speeches garnered as much press attention as his Hillsdale Fifth of July address” (Blight, 558). Quotes and snippets from the speech were published in papers across the entire country, white and Black, north and south, and white Democrats gleefully claimed that Douglass had called for Black people to separate from the Republican party. Blight describes it as “a prototypical case of a prominent black spokesman whose forthright statements about his people’s behavior and self-criticism were appropriated by racist forces” (Blight, 559).
The very next day, on July 8, the National Republican printed a different version of the speech. The paper claimed that the first version of the speech “contained a number of inaccuracies incident to a hastily prepared newspaper report. As the speech has created considerable comment, and is likely to cause more, the following verbatim report, revised by the author.” This second version is longer than the first, some of the sections are re-arranged, and almost the entire speech is worded slightly differently. Also removed were the editorial comments describing the crowd’s reaction (“[Loud applause.]”), and Douglass’s remarks directed at the audience itself (“Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen…”). I can’t find any reference to this incident in John Hope Franklin’s biography of Williams, and I don’t know if he felt slighted at all by Douglass’s retraction of the original.
Douglass wrote to the National Republican again on July 29, and referenced the edited version of the speech, noting that the speech “as published in The National Republican the 8th of July” could “take care of itself.”
Scholars have referenced both versions of the speech, and I’ve quotes from each version in various places. For example, James McPherson cites quotes from the first version of the speech in his article “White Liberals and Black Power in Negro Education, 1865-1915” (The American Historical Review, 1970–on JStor; reprinted in The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP, 1975).
The edited version of the speech is what appears in The Papers of Frederick Douglass (Series 1, Volume 4), and David Blight quotes from this version in several works, including Frederick Douglass’ Civil War (1989), Race and Reunion (2001), and Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018).
There are some punchy quotes in the first version that don’t make it into the second. I suppose we have to take Douglass’s word for the fact that the second version of the speech is the more accurate. I am not a Douglass scholar, and am not familiar enough with his process of bringing material from speech to publication to make a judgment on whether his final edited version was more accurate, or whether he was attempting to allay some controversy. Did Douglass normally speak from notes? If so, did he often go “off script” or stick to his prepared remarks? Did he prepare his own version of “final edits for publication” from memory or from his own written notes? Is the 2nd edition of the speech more accurately “what he said” or “what he wanted to say” or even “what he wanted officially on record” regardless of his verbatim remarks on July 5th? Some of these questions are nearly impossible to verify, since we have no audio recordings fro 1875, and our only access to his speeches is in the published form(s) that we receive them in.
In any case, I think both versions of the speech are fascinating, and both are worth reading and comparing. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the “unedited” version of the speech has ever been available, other than in the archives. I’ve done my own transcriptions of the original form the speech (July 7), the edited version (July 8), and Douglass’s letter (published July 29):
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Thank you for sharing your comparative analysis and commentary, as it were, on this 1875 FD speech. Thank you for your scholastic thoughtfulness and detail. (re: interesting note about JHF not including this incident in his bio of GWW. also, by the fall of 1875 GWW was running a short-lived weekly in DC, using FD’s address for business)
John Muller, author “Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia”
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John — thanks for the comment, and for the encouraging words! I did not know that about GWW and the “short-lived weekly” — fascinating stuff.
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