UNITED STATES—I was waiting for Black History Month so that I could use it to showcase a couple of GREAT thinkers who would support my Theory of Man-Made disorder if they were still around!
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, who later named himself Frederick Douglass, was an abolitionist who saw the oppression of women JUST AS fight-worthy as the struggle to free slaves. He was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls women’s convention, and signed the Declaration of Sentiments. It’s said that he didn’t want the vote if women could not have the same rights.
I can imagine the world they came from and why he would try to help women. A white “woman slave” aka bartered wife*** would be forced to watch in despair as her husband beat HIS slave, just as the slave was helpless, listening as he later beat HIS wife. The two victims would NO DOUBT grow to learn empathy and compassion for one another.
Douglass was a Republican, and in 1872 he became the first African American Vice Presidential nominated candidate. Wikipedia has his occupation listed as “Abolitionist, Suffragist, Author, Editor, Diplomat.” Douglass helped Lincoln, and was friends with people like Harriet Beecher Stowe, was involved in the Civil War, a “major Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad” and so many well covered topics.
I find his passion and love fascinating!
Anna Murray Douglass, his first wife, was an industrious young lady whose parents were granted freedom right before her birth. The husband and wife pair became an important part of the Underground Railroad and after her death Douglass suffered a yearlong “depression.”
His next wife was neighbor and employee, Helen Pitts, who is quoted as saying “Love came to me, and I was not afraid to marry the man I loved because of his color.”
William Edward Burghardt, or W.E.B. Dubois, was a great thinker that Wikipedia lists as: an “American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor.” He is the one who coined the term double consciousness in 1897, a concept that is the root of my own theory.
Only a root though, because was considered a “black experience” that occurs when the identity was split up into several other facets. The “Anomaly-Strain” part of my theory says that children of any color are forced to turn on and off different personalities to fit different people or places, causing widespread personality disorder.
DuBois was very prolific in his theorizing, and a driving force for the rights of “colored people.” In fact, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P) boasts this man as one of it’s founders. The website also told me something I did not know: he did “newspaper reporting” when he was young!
There is so much to tell, from his single mother, to his military and college experiences, as well as his first and second wives, or even his granddaughter, Dr. DuBois Williams.
Here is a GREAT video and write up of him, and although Wikipedia was not an academically allowed resource the last I knew, they have fantastic coverage of his life, writing, and even conflicts with other activists. I would also like to direct any of you wanting to KNOW MORE, to visit a wonderful blog called TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE, with chronological photos and excellent history of the first black man to receive a doctorate from Harvard!
It is W.E.B. DuBois’s research applied to split personalities, and that showed something other than “multiple personality disorder” (or the disassociative identity disorder equivalent). His passion for fairness and activism makes him and Frederick Douglass GREAT thinkers, to me, whose lives produced momentum for the fight for TRUE EQUALITY, for all.
***I feel the need to clarify. I do NOT feel that marriages are slavery NOW, but I do feel that this was the way it was back when fathers could barter their daughters to whatever suitor had the most to offer. Sometimes there was no attraction or love and women were forced to live day to day, with the person who bought them.