Ann Coughlan on Douglass's Visit to Ireland

Last week, during the preparations for the Frederick Douglass in Ireland event at St. John Fisher College, (which was -- as the Irish say -- grand!) organizer Tim Madigan interviewed one of the speakers, Ann Coughlan, for the college television station. Coughlan is a PhD candidate in literature at University College-Cork, and her dissertation is on Douglass's visit to Ireland. Her paper at the event was a lovely dissection of Douglass's language as he described poverty in Ireland. As she says, he was a marvelous writer, and that sometimes gets lost in all of the discussion over the contents of his writing and the actions of his life. He could put together a moving, beautiful sentence, and structure a story with the best of them.

Here, Coughlan discusses her own work and interests more generally.

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"Frederick Douglass in Ireland" Conference (Feb. 22, 2013)

 

Next Friday, St. John Fisher's College in Rochester, New York, will be holding a day-long conference "Frederick Douglass and Ireland." The conference is open to the public and yours truly will be on between 1:25 and 2:20 pm. The schedule suggests that I will be talking about Douglass and women's suffrage; but, after talking with organizer Timothy Madigan, we concluded that something connecting Rochester, women, and Ireland (or at least the British Isles) might be more intriguing and pertinent. So, expect something on Julia Griffiths and a tiny bit on Isabel Jennings.

Here is the schedule:

Brown Street, Cork

In October 1845, Douglass went to Cork, Ireland, where he stayed with the Jennings family. The Jenningses lived on Brown Street, which you can see highlighted on this 1830s ordinance survey map:

The map doesn't identify the street as "Brown Street," but you can see the same street labeled as such on this later map from the 1860s:

Also, not the Father Mathew statue labeled on the right side of the image. The train lines don't run along there today, but the statue still stands:

Unlike the his statue on O'Connell Street in Dublin, this one still has all of its fingers. Douglass actually met Mathew on his Irish tour, but he met him in Dublin, not Cork.

As for Brown Street in Cork today, I'm not certain but I think this is it:

That is a loading dock for the shopping center that stands on the block today. This is a picture of the block from the corner of Coal Quay and Market Street, taken in February 2012 (last month):

With the possible exception of the building on the far right, one can probably safely assume that the block did not resemble this image in any way, shape or form when Douglass visited. There are, however, three bookstores on that block. Of that, he would have approved.

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• Photographs taken by Leigh Fought (me!).
• Maps from Ordinance Survey Ireland, a very cool interactive feature overlaying three historic maps onto a current map, that Prof. Tim Meagher directed me to.: http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,591271,743300,0,10

Frederick Douglass on Ireland

I have traveled almost from the Hill of Howth...

...to the Giant's Causeway...

...and from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear.*

During these travels, I have met with much in the character and condition of the people to approve, and much to condemn; much that has thrilled me with pleasure, and very much that has filled me with pain.... I can truly say, I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life.

-- Frederick Douglass to William Lloyd Garrison, Belfast, Ireland, 1 January 1846, published in Liberator, 30 January 1846, republished in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).

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*Kinsale's harbor stands in for Cape Clear, here. At this time of year, Cape Clear is a bit dangerous.

Frederick Douglass on RTE

UPDATE: Colleen Dube of the Fulbright Commission has let me know that it wasn't just the funding for the conference that was cut (as I initially thought), but their entire budget. She wrote, "State Dept has cut our entire budget by 5% not just the conference which has ramifications for all our awards and activities this year. With the currency exchange in real terms the cut amounts to 10%."  Needless to say, that is pretty drastic and affects employment and opportunities for scholars and staff.
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Some months ago -- probably a year on their end of the planning -- the Fulbright Commission in Ireland and University College Cork planned a small, two day conference on Frederick Douglass. The idea is not as far-fetched as you may think, since Douglass spent a lovely three weeks in Cork during October 1845. For this conference, I was asked to give a paper on Douglass, and planned to present "Dirty, Sexy, Abolition: The Frederick Douglass - Julia Griffiths Scandal," which I had presented at the BrANCH conference at Cambridge last fall.

About two weeks ago, the State Department, under which the Fulbright Commission falls, cut the funding for the conference, much to everyone's chagrin. As an alternative, Colleen Dube, who runs the Fulbright office here in Dublin (which must be an unenviable task), passed on my name to Bernadette Comerford and Myles Dungan, producer and presenter of the History Show on RTE1, the national radio station in Ireland. Bernadette contacted me, I sent her my paper, and -- long story short -- Myles interviewed me about Douglass and Julia Griffiths for a segment of the show that aired this past Sunday, February 25, 2012. They even brought in African American actor Hope Brown to read selections of Douglass's work.

Isn't that cool? The whole experience was quite fun, and Bernadette and Myles were wonderful hosts.

This is the link to a podcast of the radio show. My segment begins at about 19:25, although the graveyard segment before and Percy Shelley segment after are quite fascinating, too.: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_thehistoryshow.xml

Me and Myles Dungan in the studio:

(In the spirit of ladies' antislavery societies in Ireland, I am wearing a scarf that I myself knitted out of Aran wool.)

Douglas Egerton will also appear on the show later in the month to discuss African American service in the Civil War, which he had also planned to present at the conference and which is the subject of his upcoming book on African Americans during Reconstruction.