Deployments: Activism

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Reconsidering Douglass’s legacy at the beginning of the twenty-first century reveals his contested iconicity. In the 1960s, Angela Davis read Douglass as a model for Black liberation, and fifty years later, Christopher Lebron posited him as a historical antecedent for the contemporary activism of Black Lives Matter. These activists themselves have shown how they work with and through historical ancestors, and the revival of Douglass’s North Star as a digital paper and hub encapsulates the trajectories of Black scholar-activism in which he has been placed. However, Douglass’s complex life and his multifaceted writings have made him the target of very different intellectual and political co-optations. Most notably and surprisingly, perhaps, he has become a favorite of conservatives and the political right. In such interpretations, Douglass emerges as a model Republican (Smith) and a classic libertarian self-made man (Sandefur). Laying claim to Douglass in the age of social media has blurred the lines between activism, polics, and scholarship.