Editor, Gazette-Journal:
“Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the lustre [sic] of the American name, and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty.” Estelle Irene Sprague, a teacher in the Gloucester Agriculture and Industrial School, read these words to her students from an 1894 speech made by her grandfather, the celebrated writer and orator, Frederick Douglass. Those words could have been written of today’s strange happenings and the chill of hope.
From my window in Baltimore, I can see a sliver of Baltimore Harbor near where the enslaved Frederick Bailey learned the boat caulking trade. In Baltimore, I’m never far from some memorial to Douglass’s lasting impression on this city. Finding out that his granddaughter taught at the Gloucester Agriculture and Industrial School cements my deep ties to Gloucester, where I grew up. As I contemplate the many connections between Baltimore and Gloucester this week, wo...