Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Frederick Douglass

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and John Stauffer, editors of the new Penguin Classics edition of The Portable Frederick Douglass, for a discussion of the seminal writings and speeches of a legendary writer, orator, and civil rights leader.

About The Portable Frederick Douglass:

This compact volume offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding voice is needed now as urgently as ever. Edited by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Pulitzer Prize–nominated historian John Stauffer, The Portable Frederick Douglass includes the full range of Douglass’s works: the complete Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as well as extracts from My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; The Heroic Slave, one of the first works of African American fiction; the brilliant speeches that launched his political career and that constitute the greatest oratory of the Civil War era; and his journalism, which ranges from cultural and political critique (including his early support for women’s equality) to law, history, philosophy, literature, art, and international affairs, including a never-before-published essay on Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.

This event is free and open to the public.