A. Primary Sources

A.1 Collections and Abbreviations

• [FDAB] Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave ; My Bondage and My Freedom ; Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Henry Louis Gates (ed.), (The Library of America 68), New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1994.
• The Frederick Douglass Papers, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–
  • [FDP1] Series One, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan (eds.), 5 volumes, 1979–1992. (Scholar)
  • [FDP2] Series Two, Autobiographical Writings, John W. Blassingame (ed.), 3 volumes, 1999–2012.
  • [FDP3] Series Three, Correspondence, 2 volumes (3 more forthcoming), John R. McKivigan (ed.), 2009–. (Scholar)
• [FDSW] Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Philip Sheldon Foner and Yuval Taylor (eds.), (Library of Black America), Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999.
• [SFD] The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition, John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband, and Heather L. Kaufman (eds.), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.
• 1950–1975, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner (ed.), 5 volumes, New York: International Publishers.
  • 1950, Early years, 1817–1849, volume 1 (Scholar)
  • 1950, Pre-Civil War decade, 1850–1860, volume 2
  • 1952, The Civil War, 1861–1865, volume 3
  • 1955, Reconstruction and After, volume 4
  • 1975, Supplementary volume, 1844–1860, volume 5
• 1976, Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights, Philip Sheldon Foner (ed.), (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies 25), Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. (Scholar)
• 2016, The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings & Speeches, Nicholas Buccola (ed.), Indianapolis. IN: Hackett Publishing Company.

A.2 Works by Douglass

• 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself, Boston: Anti-Slavery Office. Two modern editions are
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, David W. Blight (ed.), second edition, (Bedford Books in American History), Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: A New Critical Edition, (Open Media Series), Angela Y. Davis (ed.), San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2010; includes Angela Y. Davis, “Lectures on Liberation”. (Scholar)
• 1846, “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland”, London, England, 22 May; in SFD: 17–54
• 1848a “An Address to the Colored People of the United States”, The North Star, 29 September; in FDSW: 117–122 (Scholar)
• 1848b, “The Folly of Racially Exclusive Organization”, Rochester, New York, 6 March; in FDP1: v.2: 109–112. (Scholar)
• 1850, “At Home Again”, The North Star, 30 May; in FDSW: 156–157 (Scholar)
• 1852, “What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July?”, Rochester, NY, 5 July; in SFD: 55–92
• 1853a [2015], “The Heroic Slave”, in Autographs for Freedom, Julia Griffiths (ed.), Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 174–239. Reprinted, 2015, as The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan (eds.), New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press. (Scholar)
• 1853b, “The Present Condition And Future Prospects of the Negro People”, annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, New York City, 11 May; FDSW: 250–259. (Scholar)
• 1854, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered”, Hudson, Ohio, 12 July; in SFD: 116–150
• 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom, New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. Reprinted David W. Blight (ed.), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Also in FDAB: 103–452. (Scholar)
• 1857, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies”, Canandaigua, New York, 3 August.
• 1859, “Capt. John Brown Not Insane”, Douglass’ Monthly, November; FDSW: 374–375/6. (Scholar)
• 1860a, “The American Constitution and the Slaves”, Glasgow, Scotland, 26 March; in SFD: 151–185. (Scholar)
• 1860b, “Speech on John Brown”, Tremont Temple, Boston, 3 December; FDSW: 417–421. (Scholar)
• 1860c, “A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston”, Boston, Massachusetts, 9 December; in FDP1 v.3: 420–424. (Scholar)
• 1860d, “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men”, Halifax, England: in FDP1 v.3: 289–300. (Scholar)
• 1862, “What Shall be Done with the Slave if Emancipated”, Douglass’ Monthly, January; FDSW: 470–473. (Scholar)
• 1869a, “Our Composite Nationality”, Boston, Massachusetts, 7 December; in SFD: 278–303. (Scholar)
• 1869b, “We Welcome the Fifteenth Amendment”, Addresses delivered to the American Equal Rights Association, New York, 12–13 May; in SFD: 267–277; in FDP1 v.4: 213–219. (Scholar)
• 1876, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln”, unveiling of Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, 14 April; FDSW: 616–624. (Scholar)
• 1879, “The Negro Exodus From the Gulf States”, New York, September: in FDP1 v.4: 510–533. (Scholar)
• 1881/1893, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, new revised edition, Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske; earlier shorter version, 1881. Reprinted in FDP2: volume 3, John R. McKivigan (ed.), 2012. (Scholar)
• 1883a, “The Civil Rights Case”, Civil Rights Mass-Meeting, Lincoln Hall, Washington, DC, 22 October; FDSW: 685–693. (Scholar)
• 1883b, “‘It Moves’, Or the Philosophy of Reform”, Washington, DC, 20 November; in SFD: 374–400. (Scholar)
• 1884, “Mr. Douglass Interviewed”, Washington Post, 26 January, page 1; in FDP1 v.5: 147. (Scholar)
• 1888a, “Denounce the So-Called Emancipation as a Stupendous Fraud”, speech on the occasion of the Twenty-Sixth Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, 16 April; FDSW: 712–724. (Scholar)
• 1888b, “In Law Free: In Fact, A Slave”, Washington, DC, 16 May: FDP1 v.5: 357–373. (Scholar)
• 1893, “Self-Made Men”, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, March; in SFD: 414–453. (Scholar)
• 1894, “Lessons of the Hour”, Washington, DC, 9 January; in SFD: 454–497.

B. Secondary Literature

• Alfaro, Ange-Marie Hancock, 2018, “Black Masculinity Achieves Nothing without Restorative Care: An Intersectional Rearticulation of Frederick Douglass”, in Roberts 2018: 236–251 (ch. 7). (Scholar)
• Appiah, Anthony, 1985 [1986], “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”, Critical Inquiry, 12(1): 21–37. Reprinted in “Race”, Writing and Difference, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 21–37. (Scholar)
• Bernasconi, Robert, 1991, “The Constitution Of The People: Frederick Douglass And The Dred Scott Decision”, Cardozo Law Review, 13(4): 1281–1296. (Scholar)
• Blight, David W., 1989, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2018, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, New York: Simon & Schuster. (Scholar)
• Boxill, Bernard R., 1976, “Self-Respect and Protest”, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6(1): 58–69. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992a, Blacks and Social Justice, revised edition, Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992b, “Two Traditions in African American Political Philosophy”, Philosophical Forum, 24: 119–135. (Scholar)
• –––, 1997, “The Fight with Covey”, in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 273–290. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, “Radical Implications of Locke’s Moral Theory: The Views of Frederick Douglass”, in Lott 1998: 29–48. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, “Douglass against the Emigrationists”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 21–49 (ch. 1). (Scholar)
• Bromell, Nicholas Knowles, 2021, The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (Scholar)
• Brotz, Howard, 1992, African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850–1920, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Scholar)
• Buccola, Nicholas, 2012, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty, New York: New York University Press. (Scholar)
• Burns, Robert, 1795, “A Man’s a Man for a’ That”. Collected in multiple places including in Burns: Poems, Gerard Carruthers (ed.), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007, 131–132.[Burn 1795 available online] (Scholar)
• Combe, George, 1828, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects, Edinburgh. (Scholar)
• Cooper, Anna J., 1998, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters, Charles C. Lemert and Esme Bhan (eds.), Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield. (Scholar)
• Cruse, Harold, 1967 [2005], The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, New York: Morrow. Reprinted as The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership, (New York Review Books Classics), New York: New York Review Books, 2005. (Scholar)
• Davis, Angela Y., 1971, Lectures on Liberation, New York: New York Committee to Free Angela Davis. Reprinted in the 2010 edition of Douglass 1845 which she edited. (Scholar)
• –––, 1971 [1983], “Unfinished Lecture on Liberation-II”, in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, Leonard Harris (ed.), Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 130–136. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 339–362 (ch. 12). (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture, New York: Seven Stories Press. (Scholar)
• Delany, Martin Robison, 1852 [1968], The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. Politically Considered, Philadelphia. Reprinted, 1968, (American Negro, His History and Literature), New York: Arno Press. (Scholar)
• Delbanco, Andrew, 2018, The War before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War, New York: Penguin Press. (Scholar)
• Du Bois, W.E.B. 1897 [1992], “The Conservation of Races”, speech to the American Negro Academy, March 1897. Reprinted in Brotz 1992: 483–492. (Scholar)
• –––, 1903 [1999], The Souls of Black Folk, Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co. Reprinted, 1999, Henry Louis Gates and Terri Hume Oliver (eds), (A Norton Critical Edition) New York: W.W. Norton. (Scholar)
• –––, 1909, John Brown, (American Crisis Biographies), Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & company. (Scholar)
• –––, 1935 [2021], Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Reprinted, 2021, Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (eds.), (Library of America 350), New York, NY: The Library of America. (Scholar)
• DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1978, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Scholar)
• Dworkin, Ronald, 2006, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate, Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. (Scholar)
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1850 [2004], Representative Men: Seven Lectures, Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. Reprinted, 2004, Brenda Wineapple (ed.), New York: Modern Library. (Scholar)
• Foner, Philip Sheldon, 1964, Frederick Douglass: A Biography, New York: Citadel Press. (Scholar)
• Fredrickson, George M., 2002, Racism: A Short History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Scholar)
• Giddings, Paula, 2008, Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching, New York: Amistad. (Scholar)
• Gooding-Williams, Robert, 2009, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Gordon, Ann D. (ed.), 2000, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Volume 2: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 to 1873, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (Scholar)
• Gordon, Lewis R. 1999. “Douglass as an Existentialist”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 207–226 (ch. 8). (Scholar)
• Hobbes, Thomas, 1651/1668 [1994], Leviathan, London; revised Latin edition, 1668. Reprinted as Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, E. M. Curley (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. (Scholar)
• Jefferson, Thomas, 1785 [1999], Notes on the State of Virginia, Paris; reprinted, 1999, Frank Shuffelton (ed.), New York: Penguin Books. (Scholar)
• Lawson, Bill E. and Frank M. Kirkland (eds.), 1999, Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Readers), Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. (Scholar)
• Lee, Maurice S. (ed.), 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (Cambridge Companions to American Studies), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/ccol9780521889230 (Scholar)
• Levine, Robert S., 1997, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2016, The Lives of Frederick Douglass, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Lott, Tommy Lee (ed.), 1998, Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. (Scholar)
• Martin, Waldo E., Jr., 1984, The Mind of Frederick Douglass, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. (Scholar)
• Mazzini, Giuseppe [Joseph], 1860 [1862], Doveri dell’uomo, London; translated as The Duties of Man, London: Chapman & Hall, 1862; re-translated by Ella Noyes in The Duties of Man And Other Essays, introduced by Thomas Jones, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907. (Scholar)
• McFeely, William S., 1991, Frederick Douglass, New York: Norton. (Scholar)
• McGary, Howard, 1999a, “Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 50–63 (ch. 2). (Scholar)
• –––, 1999b, Race and Social Justice, Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Scholar)
• McGary, Howard and Bill E. Lawson, 1992, Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery, (Blacks in the Diaspora), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. (Scholar)
• Mills, Charles W., 1997, The Racial Contract, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, “Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and ‘Original Intent’”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 100–142 (ch. 5). (Scholar)
• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, 1978, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925, Hamden, CT: Archon Books. (Scholar)
• Myers, Peter C., 2008, Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism, (American Political Thought), Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. (Scholar)
• Nott, Josiah C. and George R. Gliddon, 1854, Types of Mankind or, Ethnological Researches: Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological and Biblical History, Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel George Morton and by Additional Contributions from L. Agassiz; W. Usher; and H. S. Patterson, Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott, Grambo & co. (Scholar)
• Outlaw, Lucius, 1992 [1996], “Against the Grain of Modernity: The Politics of Difference and the Conservation of ‘Race’”, Man and World, 25(3–4): 443–468. Reprinted in his On Race and Philosophy, New York: Routledge, 1996, 135–157. doi:10.1007/BF01252429 (Scholar)
• Patterson, Orlando, 1982, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Pettit, Philip, 1997, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198296428.001.0001 (Scholar)
• Pittman, John, 1999, “Douglass’s Assimilationism and Antislavery”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 64–81 (ch. 3). (Scholar)
• Preston, Dickson J., 1980, Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Scholar)
• Roberts, Neil (ed.), 2018, A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass, (Political Companions to Great American Authors), Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. (Scholar)
• Root, Damon, 2020, A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution, Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. (Scholar)
• Schrader, David E., 1999, “Natural Law in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 85–99 (ch. 4). (Scholar)
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1868 [2000], “Manhood Suffrage”, 24 December 1868. Collected in A. Gordon 2000: 194–199 (§71). (Scholar)
• –––, 1869 [2000], “Sixteenth Amendment”, 29 April 1869. Collected in A. Gordon 2000: 236–238 (§84). (Scholar)
• Sinha, Manisha, 2016, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, New Haven: Yale University Press. (Scholar)
• Sundquist, Eric J. (ed.), 1990, Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture), Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Sundstrom, Ronald Robles, 2003, “Douglass & Du Bois’s Der Schwarze Volksgeist”, in Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy, Robert Bernasconi (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 32–53 (ch. 3). (Scholar)
• –––, 2008, The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice, (SUNY Series, Philosophy and Race), Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Scholar)
• Taylor, Paul C., 2022, Race: A Philosophical Introduction, third revised edition, Cambridge: Polity Press. (Scholar)
• Van Wyhe, John, 2004, Combe’s “Constitution of Man”, and Nineteenth-Century Responses, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum. (Scholar)
• Wallace, Maurice O., 2009, “Violence, Manhood, and War in Douglass”, in Lee 2009: 73–88. doi:10.1017/ccol9780521889230.006 (Scholar)
• –––, 2014, “‘I Rose a Freeman’: Power, Property, and the Performance of Manhood in Slave Narratives”, in The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative, John Ernest (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 260–276. (Scholar)
• Washington, Booker T., 1907, Frederick Douglass, (American Crisis Biographies), Philadelphia/London: G.W. Jacobs & Company. (Scholar)
• Waldron, Jeremy, 2012, Dignity, Rank, and Rights, Meir Dan-Cohen (ed.), (Berkeley Tanner Lectures), New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199915439.001.0001 (Scholar)
• –––, 2017, One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 2014, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, Mia Bay and Henry Louis Jr. Gates (eds.), (Penguin Classics), New York: Penguin Books. (Scholar)
• Willett, Cynthia, 1998, “The Master-Slave Dialectic: Hegel vs. Douglass”, in Lott 1998: 151–170. (Scholar)
• –––, 2001, “The Genealogy of Freedom in Slave America: Frederick Douglass”, in her The Soul of Justice: Social Bonds and Racial Hubris, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 188–202 (ch. 8). (Scholar)
• Yancy, George, 2008, “Exploring the Serious World of Whiteness through Frederick Douglass’s Autobiographical Reflections”, in his Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 141–181. (Scholar)
• Yaure, Philip, 2018, “Deliberation and Emancipation: Some Critical Remarks”, Ethics, 129(1): 8–38. doi:10.1086/698731 (Scholar)