Frederick Douglass's Curious Audiences

Download or read book Frederick Douglass's Curious Audiences written by Terry Baxter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-05-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book attempts to answer a fundamental question: How did Douglass manage to persuade anyone about the evils of slavery, and even impress viewers with his personal qualities, when his speeches were commonly considered mere entertainment, in the same category as Barnum's circus acts? In answering this question, Terry Baxter provides a means of understanding the positive responses of Frederick Douglass's white audiences and African American celebrities' roles as both objects of consumption and vehicles for social change.