During our half hour interview with Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, we asked him about critical race theory.
Here's the exchange:
Kelly Swoope: Tell me why you think the critical race theory should be removed from the public schools.
Dan Cox: Well, I go back to my love of Frederick Douglass and how he addressed issues of oppression and disparity. Through praising the founding principles we have as a nation that bind us together and he always focused forwards, he didn't look backwards, with negativity and divisiveness, he said these are the facts, we have issues to fix, let's fix them and the reason we can do so is because we're Americans.
We dug into Frederick Douglass' life to better understand Cox's answer.
Douglass, a famous orator and abolitionist was born on a plantation in Maryland around 1818.
He started off his life enslaved, and learned to read and write when he went to work in his enslaver's household in Baltimore.
In 1838, Douglass escaped his enslavement by hopping on a train in Baltimore in a disguise. He went on to give several famous speeches and become an influential figure.
Dr. Daryl Scott, chair of the Department of History, Geography and Museum Studies at Morgan State University spoke with us about how Douglass would've been viewed in his time.
"It's an accurate depiction as far as it goes," said Dr. Scott about Cox's answer. "Frederick Douglass believed deeply in America, he believed deeply in the prospect of America becoming transformed."
On the other hand, said Dr. Scott, "Frederick Douglass was never Pollyannaish... He believed that the struggle against prejudice, the struggle against race hate was something that black people would have to wage and he didn't think that emancipation was going to bring about the end of all Black people's problems."
We took a look at some of the famous speeches throughout his life to give an illustration of how he spoke of America.
In 1847, he gave a speech titled, Country, Conscience and the Anti-Slavery Cause (full text here).
"I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this Country do no know me - do not recognize me as a man," he told a New York crowd.
"How can I, I say, love a country thus cursed, thus bedewed with the blood of by brethren?" he continued. "A Country, the Church of which, and the Government of which, and the Constitution of which are in favor of supporting and perpetuating this monstrous system of injustice and blood? I have not, I cannot have, any love for this country, as such, or for it's Constitution. I desire to see it overthrown as speedily as possible and its Constitution shivered in a thousand fragments, rather than that this foul curse should continue to remain as now."
In his 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? " (full text here), he said, "Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of this nation seems equally hideous and revolting."
"Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yes, his monument is built up by the price of human blood," he said in the same speech.
In the book, 'These Truths: a History of the United States' author Jill Lepore says of Douglass, "as much as he wished he could tell the story of America as a story of progress, the truth was different. From slavery to Jim Crow, the history of the United States, [Douglass] argued, 'involves the necessity of plain speaking of wrongs and outrages endured, and of rights withheld, and withheld in flagrant contradiction to boasted American Republican liberty and civilization.'"
That inner quote is from the introduction to his speech at the Columbian Exposition in 1892, according to Lepore and was distributed in a pamphlet at the fair (full text here).
In regard to Critical Race Theory, Scott says, Douglas would not view America in that way.
"Anyone who tells you that Douglass would have been a critical race theorist would be wrong," says Scott. "Because Critical Race Theory [believes] at bottom that racism is permanent."
But he also argues that what's happening today, with the Voting Rights Act, would be appalling to Douglass.
"That Douglass would today look at what has happened with voting rights, and say that the trust that Black people have put in America has been violated," says Scott.
Scott also talked about how the African American community in the U.S. viewed Douglass's optimism in the post-Reconstruction era.
"And at this moment, Frederick Douglass could maintain his optimism, his desire to fight and struggle," he said, "But many times he would take positions that not everybody agreed within the African American community."
In reference to political parties, though, Scott says that while Douglass called the Republican Party "the ship and all else is the sea," that to think the historical figure would still align with the Republican Party today, would be incorrect.
"And, frankly, today, Douglass would say the Democratic Party is the ship and all else is the sea," says Scott, "and because people who want to pretend otherwise, that the Republican Party of the 1870s, and the Republican Party of the 2010s and 20s, is the same party want to deny how, in effect, American politics in the history of American politics, there have been shifts and massive shifts, shifts so that now the Republican Party is now the party most aligned with those who believe in white supremacy."
[Note: The banner in the video misspells Dr. Daryl Scott's name. You can find his bio here.]