Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.

Amid one of this country’s most politically volatile periods, An Archive of Struggle did the unthinkable: temporarily assuage some of Yaniv Goren’s (CC ‘22) and Franky Campuzano’s (CC ‘22) existential fears. Read on to hear these intrepid Bwoggers’ eye-witness accounts of one of this semester’s more thrilling academic panels.

Franky: Although I had to look up what “bicentennial” meant, I was pretty excited by what An Archive of Struggle: Celebrating the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial had to say about the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass. And I wasn’t disappointed! Professor of Black Studies Celeste-Marie Bernier and her co-panelists – Barnard’s professor Kim F. Hall and Senior Associate Quandra Prettyman, along with 1199 SEIU Associate Director Frances Sadler – created a forum that was simultaneously spirited and civil.

Yaniv: Exactly! And An Archive of Struggle was, more than anything else, accessible. Bernier and her peers did without the pretensions and platitudes that often saturate academic discussions, focusing instead on the things that made Frederick Douglass human: his personal strife, his family, and even his moral transgressions. In memorializing one of this nation’s greatest abolitionists, these speakers also set the stage for the freedom-fighters of this generation.

Franky: Yes, and the crowd was amazing! A mix of college students, faculty, and MoHi denizens, the event’s audience was a testament to how interactive and universal the discussion that was taking place was. Well, to that, and maybe to how popular the smorgasbord of cheeses offered at the end of the panel was…

Yaniv: Ha! Though free lunch from somewhere other than from Ferris is always a selling point, I really do think most attendees came for the discourse. That’s because the conversation – even when it didn’t require audience participation – was highly engaging, playing less like a lecture and more like storytime. Especially captivating was the cast of characters surrounding Frederick Douglass: elder daughter Rosetta Douglass, who edited the North Star and went blind by her teenage years; son Charles Remond, who recounted the horrors of the Civil War in heart-rending letters to his family; and young Annie Douglass, who died while her father was in exile after being implicated in John Brown’s revolt.

Franky: Yeah, and I really loved the narrative that Bernier emphasized throughout the entire discussion. That perhaps was my main takeaway from the event: Frederick Douglass had a family who dedicated themselves to the fight for freedom, and that should not be overlooked. One of the more powerful quotes from the evening came from Bernier: “Nor were those sacrifices borne alone: Every one of those five children helped father and mother to carry the load. They accepted without a murmur their fair share of the burden, going supperless to thinly clad beds, shivering in scant clothing, leaving out of their lives all of those pleasures and sports which are dear to youth”.

Yaniv: You remembered all that? Powerful. Anyway, after Bernier’s lecture, the panelists each gave their thoughts on the book. Sadler, for example, tipped her hat to feminism, then pointed out that the women and the daughters in the family story are often overlooked by modern historians.

Franky: Which is to say that we shouldn’t relegate history to the back of our minds—especially that of badass women, who are so often erased from mainstream narratives. In fact, one of this event’s focal points was Bernier’s recent book, If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection, which highlighted the importance of documentation and archiving. If Bernier could spend twenty years perusing 19th century chickenscratch and compile it into a Douglass family tome, perhaps we could spend a few hours every once in a while researching our roots (a privilege I recognize not everyone has).

Yaniv: Amen. And damn, we could also stand to do some record-keeping! When asked by one inquisitive audience member how best to immortalize correspondences with her son in a post-snail mail era, Bernier offered some wise words of advice: “Print out the texts!” Ha. As if my PawPrint account had enough funds to finance such a feat.

Franky: Well, jokes aside, it’s crazy to think about this transcendent, ever-expanding thing we call history. Who knows what kind of primary sources the cubs will be analyzing one hundred years from this day? Maybe Bwoggers in some distant age will be covering An Archive of Struggle: Celebrating the Franky Campuzano Bicentennial?

Yaniv: Only if you print out those texts! And survive the process of writing this article.

If I Survive via Barnard College