Role of a Lifetime

Frederick I. Douglas, who has reenacted speeches by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, says he is a descendant of same. And don't forget the barbecue sauce. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

Louis Fields, with whom Douglas worked on a Frederick Douglass tourism project, says he never asked for documentation from Douglas.

"Everybody has their version of the truth," says Fields, founder of Baltimore Black Heritage Tours, "and right now, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I don't have proof that says he is who he says he is or that he isn't."

Where's the Proof?

---

As Douglas's prominence grew, so too did the suspicions of some historians who had made his acquaintance. They were vexed at his inability or unwillingness to share information about the lineage he touts so widely.

Douglas has shared no information with institutions that gather data from Douglass descendants. No birth certificates, death certificates, census records, historic letters, inscribed Bibles.

The National Park Service, which runs the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Anacostia, called Cedar Hill, maintains perhaps the most comprehensive compilation of Douglass descendants, based on documented lineages.

"The Douglass descendants provided me with their family records," Cathy Ingram, curator at Cedar Hill, wrote in an e-mail, responding to an inquiry about Douglas's lineage. Referring to Douglas as "FDIV," she added: "As for FDIV, he did not volunteer to provide the site any family records."

Donna M. Wells of Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, which houses a Frederick Douglass collection, also sought lineage information from Douglas, to no avail.

"If he would tell me how he's related, we could work it back" through the family tree, says Wells. "As a historian, that's what I look for. Give me some way to trace it back."

The same information vacuum exists at the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center in Highland Beach, Md., a historically black beach town. Douglass's son, Charles Remond Douglass, was a town founder. The cultural center is housed in the restored Douglass summer home, Twin Oaks, a national historic landmark. There, Raymond Langston, a former Highland Beach mayor, and his wife, Jean, preserve a Douglass collection.

The Langstons recall a visit from Douglas several years ago, during which he and his wife wanted to find out where they fit on the Frederick Douglass family tree.

"And I said I would have to see the documentation in order to add anybody to the family tree," recalls Jean Langston. The Langstons never heard from the Douglases again, she says.

Asked in the interview why he has not provided information to these organizations, Douglas did not answer.