What Does Frederick Douglass Say About Love, Marriage, and Companionship?

Love, true love, is bound up inextricably with freedom and dignity. I cannot speak of the heart's affections without acknowledging that slavery corrupted even the most sacred human bonds. The enslaved man had no right to his own wife, no authority as a father, no claim even to the children born of his body. The enslaved woman was vulnerable to the depredations of any man who held power over her, with no legal recourse, no protection of her person.

When I escaped to New York in 1838, I was not merely fleeing bondage — I was fleeing toward the possibility of love untainted by the master's claims. Anna Murray, a free woman of color, saw in me not a piece of property, not an inferior creature, but a man worthy of her affection and her life partnership. That she could choose me, and that I could choose her, and that no law could tear us asunder — this was a freedom as profound as any I have known.

Marriage, as it ought to exist, is a covenant of equals. It is a union based upon mutual respect and voluntary commitment. For the enslaved, marriage was a mockery — a ceremony that held no legal standing, that could be dissolved at the master's whim, that stripped both man and woman of their humanity and reduced them to breeding stock.

True love requires the freedom to give oneself entirely, to build a life with another on foundations of mutual choice and equal standing. Without freedom, love becomes another instrument of oppression.

I have been blessed with a long and devoted marriage. Anna stood with me through the darkest trials, through the years of struggle, through the dangers of my work for the cause of freedom. A companion in the struggle — this is what love becomes when two free people commit themselves to each other and to the greater cause of justice.

Love and freedom are inseparable. You cannot have one while denying the other. The enslaved cannot love truly because they are not free. The free can love fully because they possess the autonomy to give themselves wholly.