Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 278,120 playable programmes from the BBC

In Our Time

Frederick Douglass

Duration: 52 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818 and, once he had escaped, became one of that century's most prominent abolitionists. He was such a good orator, his opponents doubted his story, but he told it in grim detail in 1845 in his book 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.' He went on to address huge audiences in Great Britain and Ireland and there some of his supporters paid off his owner, so Douglass could be free in law and not fear recapture. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, he campaigned for equal rights for African-Americans, arguing against those such as Lincoln who had wanted freed slaves to leave America and found a colony elsewhere. "We were born here," he said, "and here we will remain."

With

Celeste-Marie Bernier
Professor of Black Studies in the English Department at the University of Edinburgh

Karen Salt
Assistant Professor in Transnational American Studies at the University of Nottingham

And

Nicholas Guyatt
Reader in North American History at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson. Show less

Contributors

Presenter:
Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest:
Celeste-Marie Bernier
Interviewed Guest:
Karen Salt
Interviewed Guest:
Nicholas Guyatt

About this data

This data is drawn from the data stream that informs BBC's iPlayer and Sounds. The information shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was/is subject to change and may not be accurate. More