"Watchman, What of the Night."

Frederick Douglass: My Dear Friend,ー

On my arrival in this city, this afternoon, I have been both surprised and grieved to find a printed handbill of a public meeting, for Mr. Samuel R. Ward, of Syracuse, in the St. Mary street Church, on Thursday evening last, introducing in the most undisguised manner, the spirit of colonization, self-degradation, and inferiority, to wit: the pointing of such white persons who may condescend to attend the meeting in this church under the auspicer of colored people, to a particular and superior part of the house, and colored persons to specified inferior seats; thereby, in my humble judgment, sanctioning in the most gratuitous, palpable and humiliating manner, the cruel and depressing customs and laws under which we have lived and suffered for a long series of years. And believing it to be a violation of the practice always observed in our churches and halls, an unhappy and alarming precedent, a flagrant violation of our principles, contrary to the sentiments entertained by a vast majority of the colored population of this city and the country at large, in opposition to the doctrines of the colored gentleman advertised to speak on the occasion, and at this important and trying crisis in our cause, demanding the special and universal consideration of our people,ーI unhesitatingly embrace this early moment, and the medium of your watchful and valuable journal, to record my unqualified and solemn protest against the principle, practice and precedent, which have been introduced in the instance referred to, as reprehensibly injurious, treasonable to our interests, and degrading to our people.

With deep solicitude for the welfare of our cause.

I remain, truly yours,

C. Lenox RemondRemond, Charles Lenox

Charles Lenox Remond (1810-73), the first black lecturer hired by any antislavery society, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to the daughter of a black hero of the American Revolution and a former slave from Curaçao. In his youth, he learned about the horrors of slavery from his father and experienced the segregation and discrimination practiced by Northern whites. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Remond read David Walker’s Appeal and became acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison, which led him to dedicate his life to abolitionism. Remond became active in reform movements at an early age. A member of the Colored Association of Massachusetts when it merged with the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, he became an officer in the latter organization. He became an agent for the Liberator and joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society shortly thereafter. In 1838 he began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Both his color and his ability made him a very popular speaker in both the United States and Great Britain, where he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention as a delegate in 1840 in London. Remond was the sole black lecturer for antislavery societies until Frederick Douglass began speaking in 1842. For a time, Remond and Douglass worked the lecture circuit together. Douglass admired Remond, the more experienced speaker, and named a son for him. Remond traveled and lectured in the British Isles for some sixteen months. Upon his return, Remond was employed as a lecture agent by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Through the 1840s, however, Remond remained a steadfast Garrisonian while Douglass began to favor political action to end slavery, and their friendship suffered. Their close association was troubled as a rift between Douglass and Garrison threatened, and in 1852 Remond announced his intention to cancel his subscription to Frederick Douglass' Paper in protest against Douglass's adoption of non-Garrisonian views of the U.S. Constitution. Their goals, however, remained the same, and like Douglass, Remond recruited black soldiers for the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. After the war, just before his death, Remond urged abolitionists to continue their fight by combatting the racial prejudice that persisted in both the North and South after the end of slavery. Illness curtailed his reform activities after the war. Les Wallace, "Charles Lenox Remond: The Lost Prince of Abolitionism," NHB, 40:696-701 (May-June 1977); William E. Ward, "Charles Lenox Remond: Black Abolitionist, 1838-1873" (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1977); FDP, 20 May 1852; New York Daily Times, 26 December 1873; NNE, 8 January 1874; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 46; NCAB, 2:303; DAB, 15:499-500. .

Philada., May 19, 1850.