If you think politics are disdainful now...

A couple of months ago my friend Maria of Sweet Thursday fame brought me a book she’d found at the Lafayette Library’s used bookstore. Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull, by Barbara Goldsmith was published in 1998. “I thought this looked like something that might come in handy for Helen Pitts,” she said.

I knew a bit about the stunning Victoria Woodhull, of course – it was she, not Hillary, who was the first female presidential candidate, back in 1872. Without asking him first, and with virtually no hope of garnering a single vote, she named Frederick Douglass as her vice president even though the two had never met.

Helen’s travel diary of their trip to Europe in 1886 mentions Douglass' one and only meeting with Mrs. Woodhull, who was by then living in London as a proper English matron, Mrs. John Biddulph Martin. She came to their London hotel and, not recognizing the name, Helen and Frederick came down to meet her. Helen says only that when they realized who she was, they made polite but quick excuses to get back up to their room, where they probably laughed and did the Victorian equivalent of "OMG! OMG! That was so awkward!"

The 500 page paperback has sat on my nightstand for weeks, one of those “I should probably read it, and therefore I don’t want to” situations. But I threw it in for my North Carolina trip and as everyone in the world knows by now, THAT got extended. So I was able to read the whole thing and I'm telling you: read it.

First of all it's beautifully written and exhaustively researched, and even with a cast of about 800 movers and shakers in the era, from Henry Ward Beecher to Anthony Comstock to Susan B. Anthony to President Grant to my personal favorite, good ol' mom/pimp Roxy Claflin, you never lose track of who's who.

But even more compelling is the picture Goldsmith paints of the scandal and politics that were swirling in an era that modern history as virtuous, can-do, and genuine.

I mean, there were some crazy shenanigans, nay monkeyshines going on. Spirits speaking to Commodore Vanderbilt, swinging ministers, secret triumvirate agreements… and the details Goldsmith weaves about day to day life for women are truly tragic. Didn't matter your class: once you got married, you were kept pregnant and silent and the law protected everyone BUT the mothers and wives. Yet the early women's rights movement just couldn't seem to get out of its own way, and kept eating its own.

As for that vicious Beecher clan, don't get me started.

Anyway - if you're looking for a good meaty and entertaining read that will have you donating to Emily's List by the end, check out Victoria Woodhull and her syphilitic, alcoholic clan.

My Frederick Douglass photo in a textbook

I got a great surprise in the mail today - a new textbook from Enslow Publishing on Frederick Douglass, featuring a photo I took of his gravestone during one of my Rochester visits. (He's buried in Rochester's Mount Hope Cemetery, alongside both Anna Murray Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass.) It's part of their Americans: The Spirit of a Nation series. Here's a lousy iPhone picture of my name in the center of the illustrations credits...
















I'd posted the photo set on Flickr last year and Enslow got in touch to see if they could use it - I was happy to oblige, and happier still to see the finished result. Lots of great archival photos including a rare one of Douglass in 1850, and the one I love of Helen and Frederick during their marriage. (Despite the caption, it's actually Eva standing next to him; Helen's the one looking across the table all goggle-eyed.)

So I believe this means that I am now published in a second book (Knowing Pains being the first.) Getting ever closer to that elusive goal of being in a book I actually write from cover to cover.

Watch Night 2008

I'm reading Giants, by John Stauffer - subtitled "The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln." It's beautifully researched and written and, you know, right up my alley. With only 6 paragraphs of the 314 page book mentioning Helen, and a kind inscription by Stauffer (thanks to my sister in law) wishing me luck on my book, it's got pride of place in my office.

I'm reading the section now on December 1862...the final days before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect, freeing slaves throughout the Union and rebel territory. Abolitionists and blacks, including Douglass, feared against hope that Lincoln would lack the courage to see his bold initiative through. So on December 31st they gathered at churches and prayed through the night.

Over three thousand black and white abolitionists met at the Temple [Tremont Temple, a Baptist church in Boston] in the morning...Throughout the day there were numerous short speeches and music but no announcement of the final emancipation decree. Douglass wrapped up the afternoon session by saying that this moment represented a sharp break from the sins of the past. "We have had a period of darkness, but are now having the dawn of light, and are met today to celebrate it."

Suffice it to say, Lincoln was good to his word (though waited past 11 pm to finalize it and nearly gave Douglass a heart attack in the process.)And African Americans still celebrate "Watch Night" as a means of ushering out the old and hoping for the new.

I read Douglass' words with fresh hope last night because in 2008, they sound just as meaningful. Even with Bush gutting the Endangered Species Act on his way out the door, and the black hole of the economy making it hard to see, we sense we're on the brink of something new, a dawn of a new kind of government. I hope that your New Year's Eve celebration gives you a chance to say adieu to the darkness and prepare yourself for the hard work (and promise) that lies ahead.

Happy New Year!

Frederick Douglass on the Meaning of the 4th of July

Today is a good day to revisit the famous speech that Frederick Douglass gave in Rochester's Corinthian Hall on July 5, 1852, called The Meaning of July 4th to the Negro." Daily Kos has a thoughtful essay by Meteor Blades, as well as an excerpt from Douglass' longer speech, on the abolitionist's heroism in speaking truth to power. At the time of Douglass' speech, it was a holiday that was a celebration in name only for American blacks.

And as you read the speech, ask yourself how much of the disparity that Douglass speaks of remains in American society today.

So this was, ahem, unexpected

In March I went to DC on a research trip and spent hours at Cedar Hill, the home in Anacostia in which Frederick and Helen Douglass lived. Helen spent the last part of her life fighting to have the home chartered as a national landmark and her efforts paid off. The home underwent a big restoration a few years back and now looks exactly as it did when FD lived there, down to the wallpaper and carpeting.

Since so much of my book takes place within its walls I badgered the poor docent with questions and took a lot of photos, which I'm referring back to every day when I write. One question which the otherwise very knowledgeable docent could not answer: What was up with the hand embroidered pillow shams in Frederick Douglass' bedroom?

As was the style at the time, Frederick and Helen had separate rooms, just across the hall from each other. You can just make out in this photo the pillows on Frederick's bed but I can describe them. Embroidered in red thread were three owls on tree branches, two tucked close together and the third owl on the lower branch. Underneath it says,

"Two's company, three's a crowd." On the bed. In red.

Who made these for him? Helen? What was she telling him? Was it his daughter Rosetta who really couldn't forgive Helen for marrying her widowed father? Was Helen the top owl, or the owl on the bottom? Have I been researching this subject too long? Probably.

Little bit o' pressure

Almost two years ago now, I started working on a novel of historical fiction. I spent the first year caught up in "research rapture" to cop a phrase from writer/editor Janis Cooke Newman...that phase where every time you think you might actually start writing the book, you think "but WAIT! First I should find out the name of the general who oversaw the regiment that defeated the 126th at Harper's Ferry! I can't possibly begin until I know that."

The research rapture went on and on until a seminal evening with cocktails in August 2007, when I told some writer friends with great flourish that I was hoping to finish a first draft by June 2008. One of my friends looked up from her sidecar and said, "June 2008? You could have a crappy first draft in three months, if you tried."

Well Crap By Christmas became my mantra, and I pulled it off, especially the crap part. It took another three months to finish Draft 2, the one I refer to as my "hit by a bus" draft - that is, if I were hit by a bus, I wouldn't feel so bad if Draft 2 was all that was left of me.

And now I'm on the final version, and I have to hand it over to my agent by next Thursday May 15th. That would be do-able, were it not for two things: writer's remorse, and daily life. Writer's remorse kicked in yesterday as I was out walking the Cypriot-German editor and realized: my ending is all wrong. I need a whole new chapter to finish the book. Daily life kicks in every time the phone rings, a school volunteer activity beckons, a paid writing assignment pops up, or someone needs to eat. If I get three solid writing hours in during my 6 hour workday while the kids are at school, I'm pretty happy.

Still I believe my family is as eager for this whole process to be done as I am, so for Mother's Day I'm asking for the ultimate gift: three hours of solitude to get another 30 pages revised. And on May 16th I hope to be writing a post about dropping the completed manuscript off at the agent's!

Rest in Peace, Mildred Loving

Mildred Loving, the surviving half of the interracial couple whose challenge to laws banning interracial marriage led to the Supreme Court to put an end to that nonsense, died on Friday. Loving and her husband Richard took the challenge to the courts in 1967...1967! Thirty-one years ago it was still illegal in Virginia for consenting adults of differing races to marry each other.

Helen Pitts Douglass and Mildred Loving deserve thanks and praise for speaking the simple truth: love is colorblind, and the human race is the only one that matters.

Here's the AP's obituary for Mrs. Loving (talk about a name that works).