Page 9 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

They would as willingly sell on the auction block and low, rich and poor, slave and free, white and
an Irishman, if it were popular to do so, as an black, and hence I ought to be a broader if not a
African.' Now it was he making the equivalences better man, than most other men. I certainly
between two kinds of suffering and evil. Although have no excuse for narrowness or for race
Douglass only glimpsed the famine’s beginnings, prejudice. I feel it more to be a man and a
he did seem to comprehend what Christine member of the great human family than to be a
Kinealy observes: 'One of the most lethal member of any one of the many varieties of the
subsistence crises in modern history occurred human race, whether Anglo-Saxon,

within the jurisdiction of, and in close proximity Anglo-African, or any other [emphasis added].
to, the epicenter of what was the richest empire
in the world . . .'
--From Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn (collected
Douglass had been deeply affected, even speeches and writings),supra, p. 203.
changed, by Ireland and her people. He had
learned from and fought ideological and
personal battles with them. He had found yet a [4] Study and apply the
new range of his powerful voice, and he relished
art of persuasion
the new throngs of admirers. In Bondage and
Freedom, written nine years after he left Belfast,
while remembering nostalgically the “almost We previously referenced the impact of
constant singing” among slaves in the South as Frederick Douglass on President Obama. The
they worked, the “deep melancholy” of the “wild topic was explored in a July 30, 2008 New York
notes,” his memory quickly leaped back to Times article: Teaching Law, Testing Ideas,
Ireland. “I have never heard any songs like those Obama Stood Slightly Apart:
anywhere since I left slavery, except when in
Ireland. There I heard the same wailing notes, Byron Rodriguez [one of Obama's former law
and was much affected by them." It was during students] recalls his professor's admiration for
the famine of 1845–6. the soaring but plainspoken speeches of
Frederick Douglass. "No one speaks this way
anymore," Mr. Obama told his class, wondering
Douglass later summarized how extended travel
aloud what had happened to the art of political
and expanded thinking shaped his view of life.
The insights he expressed-- similar to those oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired
later articulated by Malcolm X-- might be an Douglass's use of a collective voice that
educational model for us and our students: embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr.
Obama has now adopted himself [emphasis
added].

Gentlemen, let me be somewhat confidential and Here's an example of Obama's use of "a
autobiographical. I have sometimes been held collective voice" in his 2017 Farewell Address.
up as a man without friends or associates, but You'll see echoes of Douglass's "Composite
really I have been a very fortunate man during Nation" speech and his frequent favorable
most of my life. Few men have had a chance to references in multiple settings to the
get more that is desirable and valuable out of Declaration of Independence and the Preamble
this life than I. I have seen both sides of this great to the United States Constitution ("We the
world. I have seen men of all conditions, I have people . . .").
seen men high

Integrity Seminars: Special Report January 2020 9