![]() ![]() "The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West and they were not like John Brown either. He doesn't have a great regard for the East Coast abolitionist in general, which makes him that much more interesting and that much more compelling and also, in my opinion, more real. Frederick Douglass was a man who made speeches Henry was a kid who had been out on the plains and firing weapons and getting drunk and meeting parlor folks and so forth. "Frederick Douglass refers to himself as that. On Henry's characterization of Frederick Douglass as a "speeching parlor man" He joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss Brown's and Douglass' real friendship and why he wanted Henry to be mistaken for a girl. McBride is also the author of The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute To His White Mother. ![]() ![]() He calls the boy - who has fair, curly hair and is dressed in a potato sack - Little Onion, but he thinks Henry is a girl, and to stay safe, Henry doesn't contradict him. Brown liberates Henry after a confrontation with Henry's master. How?īefore abolitionist and Harpers Ferry raider John Brown became a hymn, he was a flesh and blood human being: Bible-thumping, rifle-toting, heroic and maybe more than a little unhinged.Ī portrait of Brown and Frederick Douglass is at the heart of James McBride's The Good Lord Bird, a new novel with an unlikely narrator: a 12-year-old Kansas Territory slave named Henry Shackleford. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Good Lord Bird Author James McBride ![]()
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