Timeliness is a virtue, and Thomas Klingenstein’s Douglass, which had its world-premiere this past summer at the Theater Wit in Chicago, captures the zeitgeist of our period of increasing racial tension. Through Douglass, Klingenstein hopes to reinvigorate our contemporary debates by revisiting the life and struggles of its titular character.
Douglass is presented as a story of redemption. At its founding the United States was burdened by the original sin of slavery, which needed to be expunged before it undermined the motivating principles of the Declaration and Constitution. Some men—such as the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and black nationalist Martin Delany—believe the damage has been done. The American dream is beyond salvation, as the sin of slavery had poisoned the tree of liberty down to its very roots.
Contrasted with these radical perspectives—one radically left, the other radically right—is the moderating wisdom of Frederick Douglass. He begins the play as an acolyte of Garrison, and struggles with the appeal of the intransigent positions of both Garrison and Delany. There is something attractive in radicalism, particularly for the dispossessed. It is sound and fury; a cathartic release, but one Douglass comes to realize is incapable of meaningful political action.
The play is best when Douglass struggles with his love of country and the racism he endures in that country. In this respect, Douglass expresses the common plight too many of our black citizens face: feeling at once at home in America and simultaneously rejected by it. At one point Douglass cries out, “I used to love America, but she does not love me!” This country, Douglass asserts to whites, is yours, not mine.
Although Garrison claims that the Constitution supports slavery, Douglass comes to believe the Constitution is in fact an anti-slavery document—one that sets the nation on a course to abolish the institution. Douglass eventually sees in the Constitution and the Declaration a promise, which must be fulfilled if the United States is to live up to its ideals. Whites and blacks in America are inextricably bound to one another: Together they might find redemption and justice; divided, they will devolve into violence and tyranny. The existence of slavery and the African-American experience makes real the vast chasm between ideals and reality, but it also reveals the possibility of true justice through a rededication to those ideals. There is an unblinking conservatism at work here.
At times, Douglass struggles to realize the potential of its ideas. Douglass’s moral shift occurs off stage, and while the possibility of this character development is indicated in the first half of the play, his transformation following intermission is jarringly abrupt. It is a shame that we do not get a smoother transition, particularly given the amount of time spent on unnecessary subplots. It is also unfortunate that the promise of so many characters is left unrealized. Delany is made too aggressive, and his complex relationship with Douglass is never meaningfully explored. And Douglass’s wife Anna—a civil rights leader in her own right—is reduced to an angry housewife, who appears only as a subplot for Douglass to confront.
But the primary confrontation is between Douglass and Garrison. Garrison’s extremism is made abundantly clear—we are introduced to him after he has burned the Constitution. At one point he asserts that American democracy is so corrupt that, had he the chance to undo slavery with his single vote, he would refuse to do so. In the play, as in history, a major division forms between Douglass and Garrison over whether the ballot box—and slow, incremental reform—can be used to secure the freedom of black slaves. Garrison serves as a warning against the dogmatic devotion to ideals, no matter how just they may be.
In part, Garrison rejects the American project because of its underlying hypocrisy: the United States is a slave-holding nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. Douglass is viscerally aware of this hypocrisy, but rather than rejecting his country, he commits himself to a rededication of its ideals. The space between ideals and reality does not require us to tear down what has been built, but to reinvigorate existing institutions with their motivating principles. For Garrison, America offers a false promise; for Douglass, it offers a promise unrealized.
In Douglass, Garrison is accused of being a Jacobin—the foil to Douglass’s Burke. His on-stage character excels at this function. However, in developing this contrast Garrison increasingly becomes a caricature, and the nuance and difficulty of Douglass’s break with Garrison is lost in a clunky revelation of Garrison’s own racial prejudice. A principled division between two men fighting for the same noble cause is reduced to a personal dispute, informed by prejudice, ambition, and envy. While these may have been factors in Douglass’s break with Garrison, they ultimately overshadow the contest of ideas promised in the first half of the play.
Finally, Douglass’s mature response to Garrison and Delany is never satisfyingly articulated, possibly due to the crescendo of the play relying on a personal dispute rather than a true disagreement of ideas. In the end, we are not given much of an answer to the issues Douglass means to address, nor does the play contend with the troubling thought that—perhaps—Garrison or Delany have a point in their radical critique. But this may be intentional. After all, we still struggle with racial injustice today; though a great deal of progress has been made, it has come in fits and starts, and has been painfully slow for many of our fellow citizens.
Despite its flaws, Douglass is worth seeing. The disagreements between Douglass, Garrison, and Delany are eminently relevant to our contemporary debates about racial justice, identity, and citizenship. The play also highlights the conservative elements of Douglass’s political thought, which are sadly often underemphasized. Hopefully Douglass will inspire its audience to read the works of the real Frederick Douglass, whose conservative disposition and steady devotion to justice might offer us a way forward.
Ramon Lopez is a PhD candidate in political theory at the University of Chicago.
