In observance of Black History Month, we’re publishing Tuckahoe, a cycle of poems which beckon us to learn more about Frederick Douglass’s life and times – and to Stand in the Place.
Robert Madison wrote:
“By chance, in 1996 I moved to the northeast corner of Talbot County just as I was working on a production of my play about Frederick Douglass and John Brown, Prospect for Freedom. When I learned that Douglass was born only two miles away, I began a cycle of poems that looked at the county (and beyond) through his eyes as well as my own.
“Naturally, I have depended heavily on Douglass’s three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), and on Dickson Preston’s Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years. “
(c) 1996 Robert Durwood Madison
Published here with permission of the author.