Frederick Douglass: A Private Life

1894, Washington, D.C.

The room is lined with books and public proofs of a life, yet what presses on me this morning is the weakness in the hands and the erratic work of the heart. Cedar Hill has become a place where visitors lower their voices before they enter, as if respect were a preparation for absence. The desk is crowded with letters, clippings, lecture requests, and the latest opinions on what Frederick Douglass now represents to men who once distrusted me for being too sharp and to younger men who suspect me of having grown too acceptable. The city beyond the window keeps its own pace. Mine does not. I have survived so many violent endings that this quieter approach of one feels almost indecent, but it corners a man all the same. They are ready to cast me in bronze while I still possess the inconvenience of memory. I know what monuments do: they simplify the struggle and spare the living from the hardest parts of the witness. I am not willing to be made manageable before I am gone.