“Frederick Douglass and the Ethics of Equality”

Frederick Douglass is known as an abolitionist, advocate of racial equality and feminist supporter. However, his life is a statement about the practice of ethics as a vocation, avocation and provocation. He was not only a lifelong advocate but a policy-maker and administrator serving as U. S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, President of the Freedmen’s Bureau and minister to both Santo Domingo and Haiti. Long before the 1967 Loving Supreme Court case, he defended the marriage to his second wife by indicating that his first marriage was a tribute to his African roots and the second to his white father. He opposed the relocation of blacks to both Africa and Santo Domingo. Thus, like King, he insisted that the United States live out the true meaning of its ethics and constitutional values!

Lenneal Henderson, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of Public and International Affairs Emeritus, Senior Fellow at the William Donald Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore. He is currently a faculty member of the Fielding Graduate University and a Visiting Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary where he teaches ethics and Public Policy. He obtained his AB, MA and Ph.D degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has served as Chair of the Board of the Maryland Humanities Council and is currently on the Boards of the Virginia Humanities Foundation and Lifenet Health.