Frederick Douglass was born enslaved on a plantation in Maryland in 1817. He liberated himself from his enslaver by a clever ruse but, legally, that did not make him a free man. So, eventually, he bought his freedom, learned to read, write, and orate brilliantly; wrote and published three autobiographies; lectured about the evils of slavery; advocated for the emancipation of blacks and then fought for equality of the races; counseled President Abraham Lincoln about strategies for winning the War between the States; and reaped honors, awards, and a photographic record of himself unsurpassed by any other person in the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Remarkably, his name is familiar to many but his singular achievements are not. This presentation aims to correct that lapse of knowledge.

Presenter: John Hunter is a retired PhD art historian living in Oaxaca with his husband, Dr. Harold Kooden. Formerly an Associate Dean and Professor at Cleveland State University, John taught Italian Renaissance art history from 1982 to 2003. With his husband, they organized a Sunday Salon of friends in New York City to discuss the contentious issues of race, racism, and white privilege. This Salon now continues to this day discussing issues of aging via Zoom with a dedicated group of people—black, white, gay, non-gay, female and male. As of 2024, they have organized a similar salon on aging in Oaxaca for gay men. John is also a self-published writer of six novels about black families and race, and a visual artist whose one-man exhibition took place in 2024 at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum of Queens College, City University of New York.