In the early years of the twentieth century, African and African American artists, regardless of the medium in which they were working, had to confront at least three issues within the established non-black art world. First, their artworks were viewed as having neither place nor value in the non-black academy. Work created by black artists and writers, at least in the United States, was considered inferior to that created by white artists. Second, black artists who made their life experiences the subject of their art met with racism in the white art community, which granted little if any artistic merit to their work. Third, and sometimes contradictorily, the art of Africans and African Americans was commodified, and seen as a niche market. The production and marketing of ‘race records’ throughout the twentieth century, for example, illustrates some of the distinctions made between white art and black art. In the early twentieth century, black scholars, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, debated the role of the artist, and particularly, as Leonard Harris shows, of literature, in the vindication of black humanity. It seems clear that now, as part of that same debate, a similar question about other forms of art can be raised. That question is: ‘What is the role of the black artist and art in advancing the status of black people?’ It is a question with political, social and aesthetic dimensions.

The years in Frederick Douglass’s life between 1838 and 1860 represent a period of intellectual and personal growth. Having escaped from slavery in 1838, Douglass over the next two decades became one of the most renowned black abolitionists of the nineteenth century. His oratory and writing skills were so great that audiences who read his works or heard him speak did not believe that he had been a slave. Douglass’s 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was meant to verify his life in slavery. When audiences at abolition rallies doubted his former slave status, Douglass would remove his jacket and expose his whip-scarred back. His narrative and his scars removed any doubts about his authenticity.

In order to fully appreciate Douglass’s intellectual growth between 1838 and 1860, it is necessary to look at the rise of an American literary tradition and the development of a unique strand or aspect of American social and political thought during these years. Douglass’s intellectual growth emerges during what has been called the American Romantic period or sometimes known as the American Renaissance. American Romanticism, though unique, also draws on British and German influences, especially the idealism of Immanuel Kant, who is particularly helpful in understanding Douglass.

Romanticism and Transcendentalism

It is the focus on the primacy of the individual that gives American Romanticism its particular ideological bent. Individual intuitive moral consciousness constitutes what it means to be human. Each individual is a rational thinking being with innate moral knowledge. Each individual is to be respected as a human being. The individual should be allowed to develop to the fullest of his or her ability. The individual is a part of nature and connected to all other individuals by this relationship.