Civic Action and Liberal Education in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The Jefferson Center for Core Texts and Ideas and the School of Civic Leadership present a Constitution Day lecture from Dr. Thomas Merrill (American University). Frederick Douglass’s confrontation with Covey the slavebreaker in his Narrative of the Life and other autobiographies provides a model for daring and intelligent civic action in the American tradition. However, it is less often noticed that Douglass’s action is accompanied, in his speech above the Chesapeake, by unavoidable human questions: what kind of cosmos do we live in? What is the truth about divinity? Is the cosmos supportive of or indifferent to civic action? For this reason, Douglass’s Narrative is not simply a text of civic education but also one of liberal education. In this lecture Merrill will use the Narrative of the Life to reflect on the relationship of civic action and education to the tradition of liberal education—a timely question in light of today’s movement to revitalize civic education in America’s college and universities.