ABSTRACT
O n february 20, 1895, frederick douglass, orator, statesman, universal reformer, and reputed spokesman of black America, returned from a speaking engagement to his Washington, D.C., home, and, as he often did, began to entertain his wife with a humorous reenactment of the day’s events. Midway through his performance, Douglass dropped to his knees, gasping for breath; Helen Pitts Douglass suddenly realized, to her alarm, that he was not acting. Douglass expired on the parlor floor, within minutes, and with him passed an era in the struggle for African-American intellectual leadership. Rising to national prominence in the year of Douglass’s death was Booker T. Washington, the new symbolic speaker for black America, who was fated to be the lonely captain of the foundering ship of Reconstruction.
