Valley Girl Views: When Frederick Douglass Spoke In The Valley

"It was not a plea for the negro. It was a plea for man, for a fair chance for all, and then an injunction for all to work. Steady, persevering work, he contended, was the only substantial road to greatness." So reported the Williamsport Bulletin , after Frederick Douglass visited the Doebler Hotel, located southeast corner of West Fourth and Pine Streets, for two days of speeches on November 14th and 15th 1867. Doeblers hall was "crowded on both occasions, and never as an audience of like numbers entertained and charmed into a state of more perfect quiet than were those who assembled to hear him on both evenings."

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery around 1818 in Maryland. The boy, who would later become Frederick Douglass, was chosen to live in the slavemasters house, where the masters wife taught Frederick the alphabet at about the age of 12. He used his new knowledge to read newspapers, and then to educate other slaves.

In 1838, when approximately 20 years old, Frederick posed as a sailor and escaped on a ship to New York. He married the woman who aided his escape, and they settled in a free black community in New Bedford Massachusets, where they adopted the married name of Douglass.

Soon Frederick Douglass was asked to tell his story at abolitionist meetings, and he quickly became a regular anti-slavery lecturer. In 1845, at the urging of a newspaper editor friend, Douglass published his autobiography.

Following the publication, he traveled overseas to to avoid recapture. He arrived in Ireland as the Potato Famine was beginning. He remained in Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking to large crowds on the evils of slavery. While he was there, Douglass's British supporters purchased his legal freedom. In 1847 Frederick Douglass returned to the United States, officially a free man.

In addition to abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights. In 1848, he was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights. Influenced by his time in Ireland, Douglass also spoke in favor of the Irish Home Rule, or the right for Ireland to rule themselves. He was passionately for equal rights among all - regardless of color, sex, or nationality.

During the civil war, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country. He met with both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson regarding the treatment of black soldiers, and suffrage. In 1872 Frederick Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States. The nomination was without his knowledge or consent, and he never campaigned for the position.

Douglass continued to lecture on equal rights for all, throughout the rest of his life. In 1867, he was in central Pa, speaking in Williamsport on November 14 and 15. He spoke at Doebler Hotel, where Doebler is suspected of being an agent in the Underground Railroad. Enoch Gilchrist, a pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Williamsport, was in attendance when Douglass spoke in Williamsport, and in his obituary we learn that Gilchrist traveled frequently with Douglass. (Enoch Gilchrist is thought to be the step father of Julia Collins, who wrote "The Curse Of Caste", the first novel written by an African American Woman)

In 1882 Frederick Fouglas expressed "a lively sense of gratitude toward Abraham Updegraff" Updegraff was a well known conductor of the Underground Railroad in Williamsport Pa.

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IN WILLIAMSPORT PA

From:

"Picture of Lycoming County, Vol. 2" 1978

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"Frederick Douglass, fighting tirelessly for black equality and suffrage, campaigned in Williamsport in 1867. On November 1-4, Douglass spoke at Doebler Hall on the corner of West Fourth and Pine streets. In his first speech he outlined his "simple plan for elevating the Negro." He asked that blacks be let alone to forge their own position in society, that they be given a fair chance. Douglass asked "If you see him going to school, let him alone. If you see hini going into a mechanic shop to learn a trade, let him alone. If you see him going into a railroad car, let him alone. If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone. Give him a chance and let him work out his own position."

To blacks Douglass said, "Steady persevering work is the only road to greatness.... Nature does the most for them that use the best means." In a speech the following day, Douglass condemned the federal government for dragging its feet in suffrage legislation. He said "A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex."

After thirty- two years of protest and campaigning, blacks finally won the right to vote when on March 31, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified. Blacks across the state organized celebrations to be held on April 26, the official day of celebration declared by the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League. In Williamsport hundreds of people lined the city streets to watch a procession of forty-one carriages and buggies, people carrying banners, and costumed marchers. The procession was led by the Boyer's Coronet Band, hired from Baltimore after Milt B. Repasz refused to lead the Williamsport Repasz Band in the parade under any circumstances.

One carriage carried speakers — E. W. Capron, editor and publisher of the Daily and Weekly Bulletin and the West Branch Bulletin , and Abraham Updegraff , president of the First National Bank of Williamsport and former Underground Railroad conductor. J. B. G. Kinsloe, a fellow editor and publisher with Capron, and Cornelius Gilchrist, a mulatto laborer rode with them. A carriage followed carrying aging suffragists — Simon Gilchrist, an 82 -year-old mulatto laborer; George Roach, a 72-year-old black man who ran a boarding house; William Butler, a 76-year-old black laborer; and* Henry and George Snyder, founders of Snyders Bros Foundry"

Sometime in November 1867, Douglass was also in Pottsville Pa, where he was refused lodging as a black man. The Scranton Weekly Paper reported "We are sorry that the Reading Dispatch, from which we get the item, does not give the name, that the proprietor may be held up to execration" (angry denouncement or curse).