BRATTLEBORO — Yale historian and acclaimed author David Blight will examine the life of abolitionist Frederick Douglass in a lecture at Brooks Memorial Library on Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.
His talk, “Writing the Life of Frederick Douglass,“ is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series.
Author of a new biography of Frederick Douglass, Blight will tell the story of the escaped slave who became one of the leading abolitionists, orators, and writers of his era.
Blight is professor of American history at Yale University and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. He is one of the nation's foremost authorities on the U.S. Civil War and its legacy.
He is the author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation and American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era.
Blight is also the author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which received eight book awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize as well as four awards from the Organization of American Historians, including the Merle Curti prizes for both intellectual and social history.
His latest book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, will be available for sale and signing at the event.