By W.E. Littlejohn
Unlike Coretta
Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,
and Michelle Obama, wife of President Barack Obama, Anna
Murray Douglass’s name has not been given the same admiration. Her name does not come to mind when iconic social
justice fighters like Ida B. Wells, Fannie
Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks are mentioned. Nearly two centuries have passed and Anna
Murray Douglass’s name does not march in tandem with her celebrated husband, Frederick
Douglass. Yet, Anna Murray
just might have saved his life.
Anna Murray never received the
credit she so profoundly deserves, for, without her, Frederick Douglass might
not have escaped slavery, and, considering the savage beatings he endured from
cruel White enslavers each time he was tracked down and caught in his multiple
attempts to escape the hell of being held hostage against his will, he might
not have lived. In resisting another
brutal punishment from the Thomas Auld, for trying to
escape, he fought back. Had Anna Murray not come into his life and help make arrangements
for his escape, Douglass might have endured more years of mental, emotional and
physical abuse.
Nearly all massive narratives, like this Huffpost.com article, claim Frederick Douglass was “self-liberated.” Nothing could be further from the truth! Black women were intrinsically involved in his liberation. The first, an enslaved woman, on the Thomas Auld plantation, taught him to read, according to historian Leigh Fought, author of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass.[i] To read is an act of liberation – then and now. How that enslaved woman knew how to read is unknown, and, since Thomas Auld’s cruelty included starving and beating the African American men, women and children, and breaking up their attempts to worship, read and write, her tutoring Douglass needed to be rigorously kept under cover. The second, was Anna Murray.
Like the determined and heroic
African women who stealth-ly initiated revolts on slave ships (emphasis has
always been on the men) that scholar, Rebecca Hall
graphically presented in her illustrated book, Wake:
The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, based on her true-story about
her exhausting research; like those women, other than Harriet
Tubman, who also risked their lives to rescue enslaved African and
African American men, women and children from the abyss of slavery; like the
African American women who initiated and bravely executed the dramatic 1836 Boston riot that rescued
escapees Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates,
who were “on trial” to be returned to so-called “masters,” or sold to slavers
(that I call human traffickers) in the deep South; and, like those women who were
rendered all but invisible in organizing and shaping the 1960s Civil Rights
Movement and the March on Washington, in 1963,
history has not showcased Anna Murray Douglass as an intelligent, clever,
industrious, dedicated, creative,
strategic and caring woman.
Anna
Murray’s mother, Mary Murray, gave birth to her baby girl in 1813, in Denton,
Caroline County, Maryland. Mary and
Anna’s father, Bambarra Murray were held hostage in slavery by Governor Spriggs
on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where the cruel institution was notoriously profitable
for enslavers. However, before Maryland
ended the detestable system in 1864, Spriggs manumitted Mary, Bambara and their
seven children. Free from bondage, Marry and Bambarra became
parents to four more children - born free. Anna Murray was the first of the four.[ii]
At the young age of seventeen, an independent and resourceful girl, Anna Murray, along with three of her siblings, Elizabeth, Philip, and Charlotte, left their parents’ home in Caroline County, set out on their own and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. (I wonder how much money they had and how was it earned?)
Baltimore, with a population of 80,000, in 1830 (568,271 in 2024), was the nation’s second largest city in the United States (New York was the first according to 1830s Census). The southeastern state included a community of more than 10,000 African Americans held hostage. All of the “free” African Americans - a population of more than 17,000 - were required, by a Maryland law, to obtain a certificate of freedom from the court. That meant that Anna Murray and her siblings were not “free” in the full sense of the word. Without their “papers,” a casual walk along a road to visit family or friends could result in any White person confronting them and demanding to see their “freedom papers.”[iii]
Intentional and determined, Anna Murray searched for and found employment as a domestic for the Montell’s, a French family, then, two years later for the Wells family, and managed to diligently save her earnings. Not one to sit on her laurels, she reached out and involved herself in East Baltimore Improvement Society of free African Americans. Her heart must have swelled with some measure of pride to observe that, despite White supremacy’s malicious and tyrannical laws, these descendants of Africans planned, organized and constructed their own churches and schools.
Soon, through her engagement in the “free” community, Anna Murray, then 25 in 1838, met Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (Frederick Douglass). He was still being held in bondage. According to historians, Auld leased Douglass out to other enslavers, including Edward Covey, who attempted to break Bailey’s spirit with physical and emotional abuse. It’s unclear which, but Auld or Covey had hired Bailey out to work in Baltimore’s shipyards. (Enslavers in all “slave states” reaped the profits hostages/slaves earned from their hard labor.)
The romantic spirit in me imagines Anna and Frederick’s courtship, and clandestine and hushed conversations about plotting his escape from slavery during slow walks or sitting under a tree or near Baltimore’s inner harbor, perhaps overlooking the Patapsco River. How soon did they hold hands; their first tender embrace, their first kiss? How long before the subject of marriage came up? Did he propose marriage then, or later? In those days of multitudinous danger and uncertainty, he couldn’t arrange for a moving celebratory moment to ask for her hand in marriage, as many African American men, today, can do for Black women, a ceremonial gesture that’s taken for granted.
Whatever their time together entailed, they evidently strategized and prepared themselves for action. I can imagine that their guts must have been gripped with the excitement of anticipation. That excitement, however, also competed with chest-tightening anxiety and fear of being caught. Each second of each day, as the moment to act drew near, unease probably radiated throughout their entire nervous systems. Exhilaration was dampened by harsh realities.
Then, at the right moment, their plot, held tightly to their breasts, finally manifested. Bailey escaped.
Anna Murray shouldered all of Bailey’s expenses for his escape. (That is a matter not to be minimized as some writers have done.) She used part of her savings and “sold her feather bed.” She took care of the exacting tasks of securing a "protection certificate" from a friend (which may have required a payment of some sort), purchasing the fabric and designing and sewing a disguise that replicated that of a sailor for the 20-year-0ld Bailey to wear, and buying “the ticket for his train ride” from Maryland to New York City, according to Leigh Fought and Britannica.com.[iv] His trip involved transferring from the train from Baltimore, boarding a ferry to cross the Susquehanna River, then catching another train to New York. The enslaver, Auld, posted a 150 pounds sterling bounty on Bailey’s head. It had to have taken enormous strength for Anna to not allow stomach-churning fear of him being kidnapped by “slave hunters” to consume her.
But, he arrived safely and let her know in a letter. Anna Murray joined him soon after, and they were married on September 15, 1838, in David Ruggles’s (an abolitionist and escapee from slavery) home. Rev. James W. C. Pennington (aka, Jim Pembroke, also an escapee from the Tilghman plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore), presided over the ceremony. The couple then moved from New York City to reside in New Bedford, Massachusetts at 157 Elm Street, “located in an African American neighborhood in the West End of New Bedford and where they adopted the surname “Douglass.” Their next move took them to Lynn, Massachusetts from “1841 to 1848, at three locations: Harrison Court, Baldwin Street, and Newhall Street.” Though married, technically, the unholy “slave laws” dictated Anna Murray Douglass an accomplice for harboring her husband as a “fugitive.”
The couple didn’t need much. Practical and thoughtful, Anna Murray had brought
to New York nearly everything the couple needed to begin their life together -
a feather bed, pillows, linens, dishes,
cutlery, and a full trunk of clothing for herself, their oldest child, Rosetta Douglass
Sprague, wrote in her book, My Mother as I Recall Her,
published in 1900, a result of her concern her mother would be overshadowed by
her father’s celebrity.[v]
She was right.
Along with establishing comfortable homes in Massachusetts and later Rochester, N.Y., Anna Murray Douglass gave birth to five children, between 1839 and 1849 – Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Remond, and Annie. “She was known to open their home to visitors of all social classes,” evidenced by the records at the Rochester Ladies’ Antislavery Society. The organization helped the family defray the costs of the Douglass’s Underground Railroad (often called “the Road”) activism. Rosetta Douglass Sprague wrote that her mother was one of the first agents to work with the Underground Railroad, and, as a “member of the Methodist Church,” The Female Anti-Slavery Society of Lynn, and her “many friends and associates, it’s likely Anna Murray Douglass received some relief from the burden of her “Road” work expenses with their help also. Ever the contributor, Anna Murray Douglass also used her hands to perform the unlikely task of mending shoes to help defray household and “Road” costs. Reportedly, Douglass contributed what he could, especially when he was in exile in Ireland.
In 1860, at age 10, their youngest child, Annie Douglass, died, purportedly of a brain hemorrhage. That loss, reportedly, had a devastating impact on Anna’s health, possibly shifting her internal fortitude; messing with her space of resilience and resistance; diming her dynamic light. Grief, trauma can do that. Her grief was compounded when, an arsonist, it is believed, burned down their Rochester home, in 1872. Obviously, and fortunately, she and her children escaped safely. There seems to be no information about whether anyone was hurt.
Seeking some emotional relief, the family moved to Anacostia, located in Washington, D.C.’s eighth ward.[vi] However, she most likely felt separation grief from having to leave her friends and supporters. (Back then, letters were the only form of communication; no phones or tech face time.)
During the ten years she managed her home in Anacostia on Cedar Hill, she had to contend with and tip-toe through the hot coals of gossip that flew fast and furious concerning rumors of salacious goings on between her husband and one of the two White women he worked with. One had lived in their home. How did she feel about that; deal with it? Did she feel betrayed, discomfort, stressed, jealous, angry, hurt…you name it? Did she agree to the situation? Did she discuss her feelings with Frederick? Or, was she okay with it? Whichever way she internalized the situation, that “condition” in her life certainly couldn’t have been good for her health. In 1882, Anna Murray Douglass suffered a series of strokes and would join her Ancestors not long after. Some scholars say she was paralyzed on her left side. Upon Anna Murray Douglass’s transition, Douglass wrote in a letter to a friend, “She was the post in the centre [sic]of my house.” Frederick would join the Ancestors in 1895. Anna’s and Frederick’s graves are in Rochester, New York. (Their home is now a historical landmark, museum and tourist attraction.)
It’s not much of a stretch to conclude that, throughout their marriage, Anna Murray Douglass was the orchestrator of, and made arrangements for, each move - from New York City, to Bedford and three locations within Lynn, Massachusetts, then to Rochester, New York, and finally to Washington, DC, just as she’d done in her move from her parents’ home to Baltimore, then from Baltimore to New York. Moving, even with access to today’s modern transports, is not an easy task.
Some historians seem to like to emphasize that Anna Murray Douglass “couldn’t read,” often using the word “illiterate,” and that Frederick attempted to teach her. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, spoke to the contrary, saying that,
“Our custom was to read [my emphasis] a chapter in the Bible around the table, each reading a verse in turn until the chapter was completed. She was a person who strived to live a Christian life instead of talking it. She was a woman strong in her likes and dislikes, and had a large discernment as to the character of those who came around her. Her gift in that direction being very fortunate in the protection of father's interest especially in the early days of his public life, when there was great apprehension for his safety. She was a woman firm in her opposition to alcoholic drinks, a strict disciplinarian, her no meant no and yes, yes, but more frequently the no's had it, especially when I was the petitioner.”
Obviously, she could count, and was a gifted strategist. Her peers, reportedly, praised Anna Murray’s economic skills. As shown, she was literate enough to engineer and finance Douglass’s escape from enslavement.
Rosetta continued,
“There was a certain amount of grim humor about mother and perhaps such exhibitions as they occurred were a little startling to those who were unacquainted with her. The reserve in which she held herself made whatever she might attempt of a jocose nature somewhat acrid. She could not be known all at once, she had to be studied.”
Sprague’s assessment of her mother says to me that Anna Murray had splendid insightful, discerning and deductive powers which may have intimated naysayers and other “phishing” individuals during those times. (Sprague's quotes are lifted from the series of Douglass’s family papers archived at the Library of Congress.)
In her loving attempt to share her mother’s lived experience, Rosetta revealed that Douglass’s lettered, middle and upper-class associates considered Anna Murray Douglass “unequal” to his status, and, “barely hid their hatred for her. Yet, no doubt, they, like many unworthy harsh critics, still took advantage of her gracious hospitality and dined on well-prepared food from a hostess who took evident pride in her home and work. Nonetheless, his peer’s attitude may have been more venomous than mere snobbishness.
The more venomous and sinister reason Douglass’s contemporaries “barely hid their hatred” for Anna Murray Douglass, is that they carried the troublesome spirit of slavery’s hateful, divisive and cruel offspring - colorism. That ugly fact is addressed in a number of sources about Anna Murray including the Smithsonian Magazine article, The Hidden History of Anna Murray Douglass. (Reading that article in 2018 was my first introduction to Anna Murray and inspired me to write a tribute to her, which I just got around to doing.)
Anna’s rich, dark complexion offended those who looked upon melanin-blessed women as unattractive, unworthy; a disgusting matter that continues today in homes, businesses, movies, television programs, print, even the health and education industries, and, especially, on social media – globally – from Asian countries, such as India and China, to the Caribbean, to Latin America. Did their “hatred” ever pierce Anna Murray’s armor of self-worth and make her feel less than? Prize-winning author Marita Golden examined this community destructive virus, and shared her personal unpleasant experiences, in her book Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex, and award winning actress Viola Davis’s shared her excruciatingly painful colorism experiences in her memoir, Finding Me.[vii]
Anna Murray ingenuously and generously executed a magnificently significant symphony of treasured, life-changing decisions hosting White and Black abolitionists, including Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and John Brown, and risking her life to hide escapees and aid in their quest to flee to Canada. I would venture to speculate that she might have felt like a single parent raising their children, when her husband was away for long periods, including the two years during his exile in Ireland. This woman of incredible courage did an outstanding job.
In her giving role, Anna Murray Douglass also lived life precariously. As with her husband, enslavers placed monetary bounties on escapees’ heads which offered huge incentivizes for so-called “slave hunters” to chase after, track down and kidnap “runaways,” by any means necessary. Gangs of hunters were brutal and ruthless. Among them was a White woman, Lucretia (Patty) Cannon[viii] The gangs, that showed unequivocal contempt for people of African heritage, could have been compelled to kidnap the family, despite Anna Murray’s and her children’s free status; even killed them. And, since White men raped Black women and girls with impunity during those perilous times for over 300 years (including during the Jim Crow years), Anna Murray Douglass had to be extra vigilant. I imagine she knew how to shoot and kept a rifle or two in their home and a pistol in her skirt pocket when she was out and about.
I, and Abrahim Aseem, the creator of THE BLACK WOMAN WHO FREED FREDERICK DOUGLAS, a marvelously, fully and richly textured animated video on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fuel4thebody/reel/DHjUhJQSAXl/, and a few other writers, offer our highest praise and tribute to this phenomenal female abolitionist. Anna Murray showed extraordinary dignity, discipline, independence, strength and DNA love. For Anna Murray, “it was a life of working in the background and often being held to unfair standards,” but she, like all Black women mentioned and not mentioned in this essay, she skillfully and magnificently persevered. She was a woman who lived with a courageous heart.
Anna Murray Douglass
(say her name)
*****
Author’s End Notes
Douglass mentions Anna only once in his autobiography, according to Britannica.com. Historian David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass - Prophet of Freedom, in an NPR interview, confirmed that disgraceful fact, saying that Douglass mentioned Anna only once, and not by name, simply writes, “my wife.” With all Anna Murray did for him, it’s disappointing and, I think disrespectful.
Her role was paramount in his being able to succeed in escaping slavery (again, she just might have saved his life), as well as his survival and celebrity, so, I question, why did he not call her name in his 1845 autobiography or his revised autobiography published in 1892, ten years after her transition?! It could be understood that he was attempting to keep her safe before her passing. After all, she was harboring a “fugitive” until British supporters paid his bounty. (The British abolished slavery in most of its colonies in 1833, freeing more than 800,000 Africans in the Caribbean, South Africa and a small number in Canada.) Also, her active role as an abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor kept her in harm’s way. Consequently, she could have been arrested for hiding other so-called “runaways.” So, she needed to remain incognito. But to not name her years after her passing, is not, to my mind, acceptable.
[i] When I decided to write this essay to honor Anna Murray during March 2025 International Women’s History Month, and shine more light on this remarkable woman, I was surprised to encounter numerous contradictions from one source to the next. Two sources, scholar Leigh Fought and Britannica.com state that an enslaved woman taught Bailey/Douglass to read. History.com claims he learned to read while enslaved in Hugh Auld’s house, Thomas Auld’s brother. Other sources claim he “taught himself to read.” Glaringly, the National Parks Service website credits the enslaver’s wife, Sophia Auld, with teaching him to read, thus, typically discrediting the Black woman. With regard to Bailey’s sailor outfit, Leigh Fought says that Anna “sewed” it, while History.com asserts Bailey “borrowed” the outfit “from a free African American sailor” and secured the “freedom certificate from a friend.” Also, missing in the various narratives about Anna Murray is that, her sister, Charlotte Murray, who left Caroline County with her, also lived with the Douglass family during the 1850s.
[ii] Anna’s father’s name “Bambarra” gave me pause. It felt like an African vibe. My search revealed a website titled The Black Names Project, and it appears to have African origins. I thought Bambarra unusual since, it’s a known historical fact that White enslavers savagely beat Africans bloody until they renounced their names, language and any memory of their family from which they were torn from Africa. The brutal and barbaric process was called “breaking.” In the 1970s Roots television series, audiences saw the terrifying beating scene, in the first or second episode, where the enslaver whips young Kunta Kente with a heavy, braided rawhide whip until he surrenders to calling himself “Toby.” Among the most heinous methods of “breaking” was called “buck breaking,” which entailed brutal and humiliating rapes.
[iii]
Certificate of Freedom: In “slave states,” African Americans born legally
free still lived in fear of being kidnapped and forced into slavery or detained
and jailed. This nefarious tracking
system was replicated in 1952 when the Dutch and British in South Africa sanctioned
the “Pass Laws Act” that required
the original African inhabitants show a “pass” when moving about on their own
land, in their own country. The true Africans had been living freely for
centuries before Europeans invaded and stole their land. The mobility stranglehold also mirrors
“driving while Black” and police brutality, where African Americans can be
stopped “just because,” often resulting in the police murdering Black drivers.
[iv]Again, inconsistences. This one is with regards to Bailey’s sailor outfit, Leigh Fought says that Anna “sewed” it, while History.com asserts Bailey “borrowed” the outfit “from a free African American sailor” and secured the “freedom certificate from a friend.” Also, missing in the various narratives about Anna Murray is that, her sister, Charlotte Murray, who left Caroline County with her, also lived with the Douglass family during the 1850s.
[v] Hopefully, Sprague’s book offers more context that tells readers how her mother transported that amount of stuff alone, especially a feather bed? Seema like a lot. Who helped her? Her siblings? Seems logical. Did Anna Murray travel from Baltimore to New York by means other than trains and a ferry? Also, considering her talent for being frugal, it’s confusing for narratives to state she sold her feather bed on the one hand, then on the other, assert that she took a feather bed to New York with her.
[vi] The name "Anacostia" comes from the anglo-cized name of the Nacochtank Native American nation that was settled along the Anacostia River, which archaeological evidence indicate occurred at least 4,000 years ago.
[vii] Shamefully, some of today’s colonized-minded, Anglophile Black rappers, use their social media platforms to spew vile, profane colorism language about dark-skinned girls and women. And, the stigma of colorism has deflated the self-worth of millions of dark-skinned women of African descent around the globe, causing them to expose themselves to life-threatening chemicals in “skin-lightening” bleaching creams.
[viii] Historians show evidence that Lucretia (Patty) Cannon “was an illegal slave trader, serial killer, and the co-leader of the multi-racial Cannon–Johnson Gang of Maryland–Delaware,” in the early 19th century. These human traffickers “abducted hundreds of free Black people and escapees “along the Delmarva Peninsula, across multiple state lines to sell into slavery in southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi. The activity became known as the Reverse Underground Railroad.” Although the “multi-racial” part surprised me, it shouldn’t have. Extensive reading has informed me that some African Americans were in cahoots with enslavers and kidnapping gangs. Many pretended to be escapees to gain confidence of residents in free communities to learn if their prey was hiding there. As such, these Black people were traitors to and predators of their own people.
