Frederick Douglass and his youngest child, ten year old Annie.

Image description: An 1859 portrait of Frederick Douglass and his youngest child, ten year old Annie. She was the youngest daughter of Frederick and Anna Murray’s children.
She died the following year just days shy of her 11th birthday.
Douglass never smiled in his photographs, yet he smiles in this one.

This portrait hangs in the John B. Cade Library at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The library is the only place where this print can be found.

Photographer unknown.
Source: The JOHN B. CADE LIBRARY/SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY
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Article

Southern University's Library Is Home
to A Rare Portrait Of Frederick Douglass And His Youngest Daughter Annie

By Robin Miller | Staff writer The Advocate
Monday Feb. 27, 2023

Her name was Annie, and she was the only one of Frederick Douglass' five children whose portrait wasn't on display at the house.

That is, the house that now serves as the centerpiece of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. It's where the legendary abolitionist lived out the last decade of his life. He and his wife, the former Anna Murray, raised their five children in Rochester, New York.

But it's the house in Washington that preserves Douglass' history, and the portrait of his youngest child, was missing until representatives of the historic site made a trip to Southern University.

Why Southern? Because the university's Archives and Manuscripts Department is the only place that has a photo of Annie Douglass.

Even better, Annie's dad sits next to her in the photo, his arm draped around her shoulder, the corners of his mouth upturned into a slight smile.

"He never smiled in any of his photos," said Eddie Hughes III, head of Special Collections. "But in this photo, you see that he's smiling."

Hughes' third-floor office houses the Special Collections room, where the photo has been hanging since the library's opening in 1984. Before that, it hung in the university's law school, where the library was located before moving across campus.

Before that?

"It was at the Southern campus in New Orleans," Head Archivist and Digital Librarian Angela Proctor said.

Southern University's original New Orleans campus opened in 1880. It moved to Baton Rouge in 1914.

"We don't know how the portrait came to Southern," Proctor continued. "And we don't know who gave it to Southern."

Could Douglass have visited Southern's New Orleans campus? It's possible, but why would he have gifted such a portrait to the university?

Proctor has checked some of Southern's early records and still no answers — at least, not yet.

"Prominent African Americans like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois visited and gave gifts to the institution," Proctor said. "We're thinking the portrait is one of those gifts.

One thing of which the librarians are certain is the John B. Cade Library is the only place in the world where this photo can be found.

"When the Frederick Douglass House in Washington found out we had the photo, they asked if they could come down here and take a picture of it," Hughes said. "We told them yes, but they took pictures of only Annie. They framed it and added to their wall."

Still, the photo's value also is found in Douglass' presence.

"You never see him with his arm around anyone in any photo, except in this one," Hughes said. "And you never see him smile in his photos, because he wanted to dispel the myth found in the caricatures of the 'happy slave' that were common at the time."

Douglass appears completely happy sitting next to his daughter. She was his youngest, his baby. Was she his favorite?

She was 10 years old when the photo was taken in 1859. The photo might have recorded one of the last father-daughter moments between them. Douglass fled the country that year upon being implicated in abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

Annie may have prayed for her father's safety while anticipating his return, but the two would never reunite. She died the following year at age 10, just days shy of her 11th birthday.

Some historical accounts say she died after a three-month battle with an unknown sickness. Other reports say she died of a brain hemorrhage.

"Some say that she died of a broken heart, that she had a nervous breakdown," Hughes said.

Annie was interred in the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, the inscription on her gravestone telling the story of her short life: "Annie was the youngest daughter of Frederick and Anna Murray's children and the light of the family. She was an abolitionist in the making and a stellar student. She is remembered as the twinkle of her father's eye and sweet spirit."

The "twinkle of her father's eye" says it all. He and Annie clearly shared a special bond.

Douglass was an outspoken Black man in a time when Black people were enslaved in the South, and he had enemies because of it. The exact date of Douglass' birth is in contention. Historians do know that he was born in either 1817 or 1818, before he escaped slavery in Maryland and became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York.

He also was a statesman, orator and writer. He wrote three autobiographies, the first, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave," promoted the cause of abolition and was a bestseller in 1845. The second, "My Bondage and My Freedom," was published in 1855.

His third, "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," was published was released three years before his death in 1885.

Douglass campaigned for the rights of newly freed slaves and actively supported women's suffrage. He also encountered danger after a meeting with fellow abolitionist John Brown. Brown is known for his 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, designed to initiate a slave revolt. Douglass didn't take part in it, but a warrant was still issued for his arrest for supporting Brown.

Douglass fled to Canada, then traveled to England on a planned lecture tour. That was October 1859. Annie died five months later on March 13.

The bond between Douglass and daughter is forever immortalized in the John B. Cade Library. Their portrait hangs in what appears to be its original wooden frame, which has taken a few bumps along the way.

The print, itself, has a tear that needs repair, and it appears to be stuck to the glass along the bottom.

"We just know that we can't send it anywhere to get repaired," Proctor said. "We can't let it leave this library."

Dawn Kight, dean of the John B. Cade Library, agrees.

"Sending the portrait out for repairs would be too big of a risk," she said. "It's the only one, and it has to stay here."

-End article-
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Source: https://www.theadvocate.com/.../article_1a215922-b275...