Frederick Douglass at his first abolitionist meetingin Nantucket!!!

For approximately two years I was required to sit in an all white auditorium and not being able to talk or participate in any way. My only form of protest was not standing when "Johnny Reb" was being sung to the Union Jack flag. You know the one, "When Johnny comes marching home again."   Because this is the direct opposite of what happened to me, I will try to be Mr.Douglass, sitting in his audience.

At a meeting of the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society in 1841 Douglass first heard William Lloyd Garrison speak and not long after that Douglass himself was asked to speak for the abolition of slavery.

And this is my interpretation of what Mr. Douglass was thinking when asked to speak before this audience after escaping slavery:

I had heard of these abolitionists and their followers and because of Mr. Coffin,  I am here to see what they have to say. Many say they do not approve of or want slavery to exist.  I have never met nor entertained the prospect of meeting anyone, especially white men, who want a black man to be free.  My heart is in my stomach and I fear this will end badly for me.  Is there someone waiting to take me back to that awful world of cruelty and debasement?  I have seen things that defy description. 

Now they want me to speak and I don't know what I can say or if I should.  Will they be so reviled that they will want to return me to that hellhole called slavery?  I have never seen so many smiles when looking upon a black face, unless it is in laughter at an indignity which has been performed on that person.

I am so ignorant in the speech and ways of these men, yet, they want to hear what I have to say.  After telling them about the atrocities and hardships faced by the black race and telling of my own personal history, I listened as Mr. Redmond, a free black man, talked about the abolition of slavery. 

I will be vigil and try to trust these people. They want me to continue talking and I will do this as I have nothing to lose because I have tasted freedom and that cannot be taken from me.