Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

AUTHOR: Douglass, Frederick

KEYWORDS: Abolition, animals, food, labor rights, slavery, race, Suffrage, women's rights

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen)

Although Douglass mentions numerous occasions of eating, both as a slave and a freedman, he rarely mentions what he eats.

Chapter IX: “Continuation of European Tour”
Travelling through France, Douglass visits an ancient amphitheater, where men would combat wild animals. Douglass regrets the “cruelty” of these past fights, and considers them a thing (mostly) of the past, save for the contemporary interest in prize-fighting, though he doesn’t specify the species of these fighters: “A sight of this old theater of horrors, once strangle enough the place of amusement to thousands, makes one thankful that his lot is cast in our humane and enlightened age. There is, however, enough of the wild beast left in our modern human life to modify the pride of our enlightenment and humanity, and to remind us of our kinship with the people who once delighted in the brutality and cruelty practiced in this amphitheater. In this respect our newspapers tell us a sad story. They would not be filled with the details of prize-fighters, and discussions of the brutal perfections of prize-fighters, if such things did not please the brutal proclivities of a large class of readers” (688).

Travelling through Egypt, Douglass encounters camels for the first time and feels kinship with fellow “beasts of burden”:
“I have a large sympathy with all burden-bearers, whether they be men or beasts, and having read of the gentle submission of the camel to hardships and abuse, of how he will kneel to receive his heavy burden and groan to have it made lighter, I was glad right here in the edge of Egypt to have a visible illustration of these qualities in the animal. I saw him kneel and saw the heavy load of sand put on his back; I saw him try to rise under its weight and heard his sad moan. I had at the moment much the same feeling as when I first saw a gang of slaves chained together and shipped to a foreign market” (706-7).