Frederick Douglass Challenges Scotland
Seasider53 / CC BY 4.0
In 1846 Frederick Douglass came to Perth and made American slavery a Scottish question.
Douglass travelled widely in Scotland after the publication of his autobiography in 1845. Having escaped slavery in Maryland, he used his speaking tour to build support for abolition. In Perth he spoke to sold-out audiences in the former City Hall, on the site where Perth Museum now stands. His campaign challenged Scottish churches and institutions over relationships and money connected to slaveholders in the American South. The argument was transatlantic, but it was also directly about Scotland.
Perth Museum now occupies the site associated with Douglass's speeches. The setting matters. This was a public argument made in the civic centre of the city, before ordinary audiences, rather than a story attached later to a memorial.
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