MANSFIELD — In recognition of Black History Month, Mansfield/Richland County Public Library (MRCPL announces the Frederick Douglass: Advocate for Equality exhibit on display at the Main Library Feb. 3 through 27.
The exhibit is in the 2nd-floor lobby and is available to experience during open hours.
In this traveling exhibition, viewers can learn about Douglass’s escape from slavery, his work as an abolitionist, and his tireless fight for equality for all individuals in the Jim Crow era.
This exhibition explores Douglass’s impact and life through his own words and in photographs and documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection.
“There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible … I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity,” said Frederick Douglass in Our Composite Nationality, 1869.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was unquestionably the most well-known and influential anti-slavery advocate in America before the Civil War.
When he came to Mansfield in 1857 he was only 39 years old and had published two autobiographies. Senator John Sherman of Mansfield knew Douglass well after the war when they both lived in Washington D.C. (From the Sherman Room of MRCPL.)
The Main Library is open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit mrcpl.org.