This is an abridgement of a longer piece that first appeared in 1912. The work is a largely biographical account of Douglass’s life told through the prism of the history of the slave trade.
It’s no surprise that Pickens saw a role model in Frederick Douglass. He makes a canny comparison of him with Abraham Lincoln. “The life of Frederick Douglass is an epitome of human life, which began at the very lowest and ends at the very highest. The life of Abraham Lincoln is typically American, the life of Frederick Douglass is typically human. Lincoln began in the lowest degradation of human freedom; Douglass began in the lowest degradation of human slavery.”
After a brilliant academic studies at Yale Pickens (1881-1954) began a teaching career and Talladega, Alabama and then Marshall, Texas. A contemporary obituary of Pickens notes that he joined the NAACP in 1920, “where for twenty-two years he was an outstanding militant advocate in civil and human rights for Negroes over forty years. Through travels, that involved many grave risks, Pickens continued to teach with his pungent eloquence, wit, and devastating logic in conferences and on the lecture platform. In this role he equaled or surpassed Frederick Douglass as the most powerful Negro spokesman that has appeared in America” (Brewer).
Uncommon, OCLC locates 10 copies.
Brewer, W.M., “William Pickens” in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (July, 1954), p.243.