A Good Work for Our Race To-Day
Interests, Virtues, and the Achievement of Justice in Frederick Douglass's Freedmen's Monument Speech
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3552268 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter C Myers (University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 209-225 |
| Publication date | 2010-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003055410000171 |
| OpenAlex | W2028228331 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 28 |
Frederick Douglass's Freedmen's Monument speech of 1876 is notable for its complexity, and commentators have offered widely varying readings. Critics have judged it an abdication of racial responsibility, indicative of an unwarranted optimism characteristic of Douglass's larger argument on racial reform. In this article, I explicate this speech, highlighting the complex rhetorical design in which Douglass forges a memory of Lincoln as a medium for issuing carefully targeted appeals to the interests and virtues of black and white Americans. In its hitherto underappreciated theoretical dimension, the speech epitomizes a theory of racial progress that challenges recent, pessimistic readings of America's racial history and prospects
Argument (complex analysis · Art · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Law and economics · Literature · Optimism · Pessimism · Political science · Race (biology · Rhetorical question · Sociology · White (mutation · Academic Freedom and Politics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Reconstruction
To wake the nations
American apartheid
The Black image in the white mind
The Federalist
Silent Covenants
Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma
Critical Race Theory
Beyond the Battlefield
Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke, Peter Laslett
Abraham Lincoln
Whitewashing Race
Black Wealth / White Wealth
The Scar of Race
Frederick Douglass' Civil War
The Mind of Frederick Douglass
American Political Thought
Beyond the Battlefield
The House I Live In
Lincoln Reshapes the Presidency
The House I Live In
Lincoln in American Memory
The Mind of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July
Critical race theory
| Citations per year | 0.19 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2010 - 2015 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |