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- This is One-On-One.

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- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

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- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Remember Them.

I'm Steve Adubato with my colleague and co-anchor and the executive producer of Remember Them, Jacqui Tricarico.

Hey Jacqui, Frederick Douglass.

Incredibly important.

Set the tone for what we're about to see, this in-depth interview we're doing with Ken Morris Jr., Who is the great, great-- - Great-- (laughing) - Three?

- Grandson.

Three greats, yeah, great, great, great grandson of Frederick Douglass.

He's also the great, great grandson of Booker T Washington.

And he also created the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives organization.

So we get to have a, you get to have a really long in-depth conversation with him, with Ken Morris, about the great Frederick Douglass.

And I think there's a major theme across Douglass' life and even with your interview with Ken, is education.

Education really is the pathway to freedom is what Frederick Douglass believed and what he told so many other people about.

And you see that with him escaping slavery, and then teaching himself how to read, how to write, and doing that so eloquently as far as creating his own newspaper that he published weekly called The North Star, just to get information out there, real information out there about what was happening to the people that were enslaved.

And then a step further when he decided to write a memoir called "A Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass"-- - That's the book right there.

- Exactly, yeah.

So that memoir was so important for him to put into words and into a book what actually happened to him during his younger years when he was enslaved.

And also to combat all the people that were saying that he was a fraud.

So many people didn't believe the things he said, that he was enslaved, because he was so well educated.

So he put this memoir together, and it really resonated with so many people.

It was published, republished so many times year after year since 1845.

It's still an educational tool out there.

So that was a really important part of his story.

- Jacqui's trying to cram so much in here, because there is so much to cram in here about Frederick Douglass, 19th century civil rights pioneer, the father of civil rights, born to slavery in 1818.

So here's the thing.

Now someone might ask, why do you have Abraham Lincoln's picture over there?

That's a John Meacham book about Lincoln.

If it were not for Frederick Douglass and Frederick Douglass' engaging of the President Abraham Lincoln at the time, history could easily have been very different, because again, Ken Morris will talk about this in the interview that we're about to do.

But Lincoln relied on Frederick Douglass to advise him about the Civil War, about African Americans, about Blacks fighting for the union.

If they were not able to, not allowed to give up their lives for the country, history may have been very different.

- Agreed, yeah.

And Ken really gets into that too about the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Lincoln, and specifically their third meeting.

And you'll hear more about that from Ken.

at the White House, and how significant that was in so many different ways.

You'll hear more about that from Ken.

- Yeah, and by the way, people say, oh, so he went to the White House.

Think about it, 1840s, 1850s.

Frederick Douglass, the first Black to be in the White House in that capacity, and also serve in a federal post a little bit later on.

So for Jacqui, myself, and the entire Remember Them team, we recognize and honor Frederick Douglass.

By the way, Jacqui, real quick before we go to Mr. Morris, the New Jersey connection, I plugged it, but we didn't say why.

Underground Railroad New Jersey connection.

Gimme 30 seconds.

- Yeah, and specifically, Frederick Douglass coming here in Newark and giving a really important speech in Newark.

And it's funny, 'cause you'll hear from Ken, him and his colleague actually are the ones who uncovered that information and found out about that visit and had their hands in the renaming of the Rutgers Athletic Field in Newark to the Frederick Douglass Field.

And we'll hear more about that too from Ken.

- It is an honor for Jacqui, myself, and the entire Remember Them team to honor, recognize those who have passed, but had and continue to have such an important impact on our lives.

Now Frederick Douglass is a national, international figure, but there is a New Jersey connection.

So for Jacqui and myself, thank you for staying with us right here.

We switch gears, quick break, and then on with Ken Morris Jr., the great, great, great-- - One more.

- grandson of Frederick Douglass.

Remember Them.

- We are honored to be joined by Ken Morris, Jr., who is the Co-Founder and President of the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.

And Frederick Douglass, he's also Frederick Douglass's great-great-great-grandson.

Ken, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

Ken is also the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington.

Explain that whole thing to us, please.

(Kenneth laughing) - You know, that's a question that people, typically, ask me right off the bat, because, you know, most people will say, "I know that Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington weren't related to each other.

How is it you're related to both of them?"

Well, here's how it happened.

It's all on my mother's side of the family.

So my mother's mother, Nettie Hancock Washington, was Booker T. Washington's granddaughter.

My mother's father, Frederick Douglass III, was Frederick Douglass's great-grandson.

And so my grandparents met in 1941 at Tuskegee Institute, which is a school that Booker T. Washington founded in 1881 at the age of 25 years old.

They happened to be on campus the same day.

My grandmother was rushing across to meet friends.

My grandfather, who had been commission downed by the Veterans Administration during World War II as a surgeon was walking to get something to eat that night.

And they, literally, bumped into each other, didn't know that the other descended from an historic family.

And they fell in love at first sight and wound up getting married three months later.

And so when my mom, Nettie Washington Douglass, was born, she was the first person to unite the bloodlines of these historic families.

And she was an only child, so I have the honor and privilege of being the first male to carry the dual lineage.

So that's how it happened.

(chuckles) - Extraordinary.

Help people understand why we honor and recognize Frederick Douglass.

- Frederick Douglass is one of this country's greatest heroes.

He was born into slavery with the name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on the eastern shore of Maryland.

He was born to an enslaved woman and to a white man.

It was presumed that his enslaver was his father.

He only saw his mother a handful of times his whole life, because she lived on a plantation that was 12 miles away.

So in order for her to see her son, she would have to walk, or work in the fields picking cotton from sun up to sun down, walk 12 miles in the middle of the night, and spend just a few precious moments with him.

And then, she would have to be back on the plantation by the time the sun came up.

He only saw his siblings a handful of times as well.

They were like strangers to him because he had been separated from them.

But he did have someone on the plantation that showed him some love and nurturing and care, and that was his grandmother, Betsy.

And her job was to raise him until he was ready to go to the main plantation to begin his life in manual labor, and that was around five or six years old.

But he did have something that happened in his life when he was around eight or nine that he described in his first autobiography, the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave."

He described this moment in time as "divine Providence in his favor", and that was when he was chosen from among all of the children on the plantation on the eastern shore to go to Baltimore to be the house servant for his enslaver's family.

And the importance of this move was he was leaving an environment where he wasn't around people that could teach him how to read and write.

Because we know from our U.S. History, it was illegal to teach an enslaved person to read and write.

But when he got to Baltimore, his slave mistress, Sophia Auld, had never had a slave before, didn't know that it was illegal, began to teach him his ABCs, and that was all he really needed was that little spark of light into his mental bondage.

But when his enslaver found out about the lessons, he got angry.

And he looked at Frederick, and he looked at his wife, and he said, "You cannot teach a slave how to read and write, because if you do, it will unfit him to be a slave."

Frederick heard that message and knew, right then and there, that education was going to be his pathway to freedom.

He would eventually escape at the age of 20, become a paid lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

He would write three bestselling autobiographies, become an advisor to President Lincoln during the Civil War.

And then, become... - How about the newspaper?

How about the newspaper?

- And published "The North Star" newspaper out of Rochester, New York, which was the leading abolitionist voice.

He was the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States, first African-American U.S.

Marshal.

Let's see, first African-American Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia, first African-American Ambassador and Council General to Haiti, and the first African-American to have a statue dedicated in his honor.

And he had a 50 plus year public, as a public figure.

So he was definitely an important person in the history of the United States.

- Well, first of all, our Executive Producer and my co-anchor, Jacqui Tricaricor, said, "Listen, Ken knows more than anyone on this," (Kenneth laughing) and you're demonstrating right now.

- I don't know about that.

I haven't won a Pulitzer Prize.

- Well, you're laying it out.

It's just not simply how much you know.

It's how you just communicated that, Ken, that is so important.

Let me ask you this, because Lincoln is here.

And by the way, check out John Meacham's book on Lincoln.

Help people understand 1850s, '60s, the relationship between Lincoln... Is it 1860s?

- Yeah, 1860s.

So they had a, what I would describe as, a contentious relationship.

- That's what I thought.

- Yes.

Yeah, they became friends there toward the end.

- Real friends?

(chuckling) - I would not say close friends, but close enough that when Lincoln was assassinated, Mary Todd Lincoln gave Frederick Douglass Lincoln's favorite walking stick.

And that was passed down in our family.

And my great-grandmother, Fannie Douglass, who was married to Frederick Douglass's grandson, Joseph, she donated that to the Frederick Douglass National Historic site.

So if you go to the site in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the visitor center is that cane that was passed down in our family.

So that shows that they did have a relationship that evolved where they came to respect each other.

And Frederick Douglass said at their first meeting in 1863, he said, "That was the first time that a white man ever stood for me and called me 'Mr.

Douglass.'"

So there was a mutual respect there, but we know that Lincoln was very slow to move toward abolition.

- He was.

- Yeah.

- You know, it's the expression in American History books and vernacular, "Lincoln freed the slaves."

As if, and by the way, it speaks for itself.

It's historic.

It's leadership.

It's important on so many levels.

But not only didn't he do it alone, but the question becomes, What would've happened if Frederick Douglass had not pushed Lincoln, encouraged Lincoln, cajoled Lincoln, whatever he did, to not only move faster, but also to have blacks serve in the military, including, if I'm not mistaken, Douglass's son?

- Two sons.

- Two sons, I apologize.

Go ahead.

Talk to us.

- Yeah, his oldest son Lewis, and then my great-great-grandfather, Charles Remond Douglass, who was the youngest son.

They both served in the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.

And so to answer your question, we would be a very different country sitting here today had we not had the contributions of Frederick Douglass as the great abolitionist.

And we know from our U.S. History, or we should know from our U.S. History, that Lincoln was, as I said a moment ago, he was slow to moving toward emancipation.

And you had someone like Frederick Douglass and the other abolitionists that were agitating him and saying, "Mr. Lincoln, we cannot wait for the slow, gradual emancipation of slavery.

We need it now."

And so they met on at least three occasions that we know of.

The first time was in 1863 when Lincoln stood and said, "Mr. Douglass," called him Mr. Douglass.

And Frederick Douglass had gone to pay him a visit to talk about equal pay for black soldiers fighting for the Union Army and advancing in rank.

And then, the second time they met was in 1864 when Lincoln invited Douglass to the White House because he needed to get his advice on his reelection campaign, and also recruiting soldiers, more soldiers from from the South.

And then, the third time they met, which is, I think, the story that I like the most, was at Lincoln's second inauguration.

And there's a great photograph if you do a Google search.

You'll see Lincoln giving his inaugural address, Frederick Douglass there in, close to the front row, and then John Wilkes Booth is actually in the balcony.

So it's this iconic photograph.

And after Lincoln gave his address, he invited Frederick Douglass to the Executive Mansion for the, as the kids would call it, the after party.

And when Douglass got to the door, they wouldn't let him in.

He was, at this time, one of the most famous men, most photographed Americans of the 19th century.

He had international stature, was known around the world.

He'd written two bestselling autobiographies at that time, as I said, publisher of "The North Star" newspaper.

He was what we would call an A-list celebrity today.

But none of that mattered because of the color of his skin, and they wouldn't let him in.

But when word got back to Lincoln that he was outside, Lincoln said, "Oh, no.

Let him in."

And as they were walking toward each other, and Lincoln was 6'4" and Frederick Douglass was over 6 feet, so they were very tall, commanding figures for that time period.

So if you can get this visual of these two giants walking toward each other, and Lincoln points out, "Here comes my friend, Frederick Douglass.

I want to know what you thought about my speech, because there's no person's opinion that I value more than yours in this country."

And he called Douglass "one of the most meritorious men in the nation."

And Douglass responded, "That was a sacred effort, Sir."

- Let me ask you this.

Because we are a New Jersey based production.

I'm born and raised in Brick City, Newark, New Jersey.

I know there is a connection with Frederick Douglass and Newark.

He visited Newark.

What year?

- 1849, April 17th, 1849 at the invitation of local abolitionist leaders.

And there's a church that stood squarely on the athletic field that is now the Rutgers campus.

And in 2018, we were doing a project called One Million Abolitionists, where we published a special bicentennial edition of Frederick Douglass's first autobiography.

And we were, and are working to give away 1 million copies of that book to young people all over the world.

And we were visiting St. Benedict's Preparatory School on that day.

- Right.

Our friend, Father Edwin Leahy, is the Headmaster.

Go ahead.

- Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Just a remarkable man.

And we gave away 650 copies of the books that day.

And one of our board members who funded those books is from New Jersey.

And we were driving around the city, and he said, "I wonder if, you know, Frederick Douglass ever spoke in Newark?"

And he found that he did speak in that year.

And he contacted Rutgers and told them that there was a church that sat on the side of the athletic field, and, "Could we do something to commemorate that?"

(Steve chuckles) And so in 2019, they renamed that athletic field Frederick Douglass Field.

Explain to folks the Underground Railroad, A.

B, the role Frederick Douglass played in it.

And C, complex I know, the New Jersey connection, please.

- The Underground Railroad is a network of people, places, and spaces working together to help freedom seekers who were mostly escaping from the upper South to Canada.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law, or Fugitive Slave Act, was passed.

And that meant that if you were escaping, let's say a slave state like Kentucky, and you went across the Ohio River to a free state like Ohio prior to 1850, you could literally wave back across the river to your enslaver and he really, there was nothing he could do.

But after 1850, it meant that enslavers could go into any state in the Union, free or slave, to recapture their property.

It also meant that the people in those cities or municipalities had to assist in the recapture of the property.

And then, the third thing, really, that it did was that you could be arrested if you were found to have helped a, what we would've called, a "fugitive slave" at that time.

We call those people "freedom seekers" now to change that narrative.

And so helping them get to Canada, where Canada had already abolished slavery.

And so the home, the Douglass home in Rochester, was a station on the Underground Railroad because of its proximity to Canada.

And my great-great-great-grandmother, Anna Murray Douglass, who I'd like to just take a second to talk about because... - Please.

- there would be no Frederick Douglass without Anna in his life.

- Why is that?

- She was the first person, really, to plant the seed of thought in his mind that he was not meant to be a slave for life.

They met while he was a teenager enslaved in Baltimore.

She was the first person in her family to be born free, and she worked as a domestic servant.

And they would meet, and start to care about each other, and think about a future together.

And she said, "Frederick, I don't want our children's father to be a slave."

And had she not sold her personal belongings to help finance his escape, had she not sewn the sailor's disguise that he would wear, who knows if he would've had the courage or the wherewithal to run away.

And had that not happened, again, without the contributions of Frederick Douglass as a great abolitionist and a great statesman, we would be a very different country here today.

She was a radical freedom fighter in her own right, and she was Frederick's equal partner in the struggle for freedom.

She was the one in the home in Rochester that was helping hundreds of freedom seekers make it to Canada, because he was out on the road speaking.

And so she's at home taking care of the house and helping these people get clothed and fed, and pushing them onto Rochester.

They were married for 44 years.

They had five children together and 21 grandchildren.

So we always want to lift up the life and legacy of Anna Murray Douglass, who really has been written out of history.

And it's been kind of a longstanding lament in our family that she has not been treated with the dignity and respect that she deserves.

- I'm glad you did that, Ken.

You're doing an important service, because while we can talk about Frederick Douglass, again, did not do it alone, and helping people understand the role that his wife played.

It's so important.

Do this for us.

I was remiss.

Give us a minute or so on the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.

What is it, as the website is up there, so people can find out more, please?

- In 2005, I read a "National Geographic" magazine cover story, and the headline was "21st Century Slaves."

And it was an article about human trafficking existing all over the world.

And really up to that year, I had not embraced my lineage for many reasons.

When I was younger, the few times that I told people of my relationship to Washington and Douglass, nobody ever believed me.

(Steve chuckling) And I never thought that it was a point worth arguing.

And I'd also seen what the pressure had done to those that came before me.

And so, I was really, as I describe it, decisively disengaged from my lineage until Providence called in my life, and it was that magazine.

And I'd heard about human trafficking existing, and I thought about it in far off places.

And as I started to really research the issue, there was one night that changed the trajectory of my life.

And I was in my living room, and down the hallway, my daughters were getting ready for bed.

And I was reading another article about a 12 year old girl who was forced to be a sex slave in the brothels of Southeast Asia and service countless men almost every single night.

And down the hallway, I could hear my girls laughing and playing, and they were about to get on their knees to say their prayers and get tucked safely into bed.

And my mind just starts racing.

And I can't wrap my brain around what I'm reading about this 12 year old girl and what I'm hearing in my daughters who were close in age.

And when I walked in to say, "Goodnight," to my girls, I had this moment where I couldn't look them in the eyes.

And I didn't feel like I could look them in the eyes and walk away and not do something about this.

And it was almost immediately that everything just started to, you know, boil up inside of me.

And I realized that I did have this platform that my ancestors have built through struggle and through sacrifice, and perhaps, we could leverage the historical significance of my ancestry to do something about this.

And started thinking about Frederick Douglass and his legacy as the great abolitionist, and Booker T. Washington and his legacy as the great educator.

Combine those, "Aha!

Abolition through education.

How could we unfit communities to allow slavery to exist and thrive?"

And so my mom and I started the organization Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives in 2007.

And we immediately turned to schools and just got to work.

- When I think about Frederick Douglass, the more I've read about him, the more I've thought about him, I think as a student of leadership, I write about it, think about it, fail at it all the time, I think about courage.

How do you even describe the degree of courage, personal courage and bravery, that Frederick Douglass had to do what he did, when he did, how he did it in that environment?

Courage.

- Courage is a great word.

He spoke truth to power.

He was fearless.

But what I like to think about, because of my unique connection to him, and his blood flows through my veins, and I carry his DNA, and I think about the lessons of love and humility that have been passed down through the generation, lessons about forgiveness.

And here was a boy who, as I mentioned earlier, that was born into slavery.

He was truly an orphan with no family, no home, and no country.

And so if you can imagine, when he would eventually have five children, which he didn't get to see a lot because he was traveling so much.

But then he had 21 grandchildren.

And stories about him getting down on all fours and giving his grandkids horseback rides, and they would use his, as we call it, "his great big white hair" as the reigns.

He would let his granddaughters braid his hair with colorful ribbons.

And so if you could just imagine how important family would've been to him since he did not have a family as a little boy.

Those are the things.

You know, I'm proud of my ancestors for many things.

I'm proud of the contributions that they've made to the country, to the world, you know, the path of freedom that they set forth for all of us.

But I think I'm most proud because when he escaped from slavery and he made that decision to step on that train, it was a decision for future generations.

I would not be sitting here today had he not escaped, and had Anna not escaped.

And then when they settle in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and start their family, you know, they could have just said, "We're in a free state now."

He had a skill as a ship caulker, so he started to work.

But he looked back, and while his brethren, his family were still enslaved, he didn't feel that, that he could be free until everybody was free.

And he and Anna got to work, and I'm most proud of that.

- Ken B. Morris Jr., Co-Founder and President of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass, and a great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington.

You honor us, Sir, and I thank you for joining us.

And people are better for and understand more about Frederick Douglass and his significance because of you.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Frederick Douglass.

That's Ken Morris.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Holy Name.

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And by Seton Hall University.

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And by ROI-NJ.

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