It’s time to reinvent Frederick Douglass as the equal of Abraham Lincoln in the 19th-century fight to end slavery in the U.S., according to the historian behind Apple TV’s new “Lincoln’s Dilemma” series.
David S. Reynolds said the streaming series that premieres Friday reflects a Black Lives Matter-inspired effort among academics to replace White-savior narratives with a renewed emphasis on Black figures like the slave-turned-abolitionist Douglass.
“There’s a sea change today toward resurrecting and emphasizing the history of African-Americans,” Mr. Reynolds told The Washington Times in an interview. “This documentary represents that. But we don’t want to swing the pendulum too far away from Lincoln hagiography to putting Douglass up on a pedestal.”
Mr. Reynolds, a distinguished professor of American studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said the series tones down a past emphasis on Lincoln’s greatness to present Douglass as his equal.
“Frederick Douglass was as great as Lincoln, a great reformer who had been enslaved and was very prolific, a great orator who was magnetic at getting his passion across,” Mr. Reynolds said. “But he never entered politics, so he needed Lincoln, who couldn’t be as angry and militant because he needed to get votes.”
Narrated by actor Jeffrey Wright with voice work by Bill Camp and Leslie Odom Jr., the four-part documentary adapts Mr. Reynolds’ 2020 nonfiction book “Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times.”
In a press release, Apple said the show “gives voice to the narratives of enslaved people, shaping a more complete view of an America divided over issues including economy, race and humanity, and underscoring Lincoln’s battle to save the country, no matter the cost.”
Mr. Reynolds said current events led the Apple series to focus on the parts of his book that center on African Americans during the Civil War.
“Every generation recreates Lincoln in its own image, from a conservative South-loving hero in the era of Jim Crow to the 1960s Civil Rights movement radicals who thought he was a racist,” Mr. Reynolds said. “Then there’s the alt-right today that sympathizes with the old Confederacy and uses Lincoln as a villain of states’ rights and individual liberty.”
Because of this, the author said the documentary gives equal time to Douglass and historians of color.
“Frederick Douglass is more featured in this film,” Mr. Reynolds said. “Ten years ago, that never would have happened.”
He noted that American historians started giving more attention to Douglass and the role of Black Civil War soldiers a decade ago to redress the perception “that African American figures hadn’t always been recognized.”
The Apple series brings that development to a new level.
“During Jim Crow, Lincoln was banned from pro-Confederate textbooks, and today we see the Confederate flag being waved in places like Charlottesville,” Mr. Reynolds said.
The professor said Lincoln hated slavery as much as Douglass, but had to “lean to the right politically” to keep the country together as the first president from the minority Republican Party.
“The film shows that Lincoln had to be a very practical politician to keep the Union together,” Mr. Reynolds said. “There’s no way Lincoln could make the Civil War about emancipation when he had five border states ready to join the Confederacy if he did.”
Meanwhile, he said Douglass played a role similar to that of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s civil rights movement.
“The importance of Frederick Douglass is that he was one of several consciences who goaded Lincoln to direct the war toward emancipation,” Mr. Reynold said. “My book shows that Lincoln was closer to African-Americans than was previously thought, and Douglass called him the least prejudiced White person he ever met.”
Mr. Reynolds, 73, described the book and film as the only “cultural biography” of Lincoln.
“He could quote everything from Shakespeare by the page to very bawdy jokes,” Mr. Reynolds said. “That’s very important to understanding him.”
