Rico enjoys the friendship of two gentlemen-of-color, and therefore strives, when he can, to become more aware of what that means for them (and for, possibly, our next President come the election) in this country.Upon reading the Narrative of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (which you should go to Amazon by clicking the post title and buy the book immediately, or at least go to the library and get it like Rico did), published in 1845, he was struck by a couple of things he'd forgotten: Douglass was only half-black, with a white father and a black mother (no surprise in the South of the 1860s, and also reminiscent of a certain current presidential candidate), was born near Easton, Maryland (where Rico has been many times en route to the Eastern Shore), and delivered a famous address in 1841, at the age of 23, at the convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket, where Rico has spent a lot of time (what with his mother living there, as she mostly has since he got out of high school).
All in all, an interesting man, and one worthy of more study; after the war, he became a US marshal, consul general to the Republic of Haiti, and ambassador to the Dominican Republic, before dying of a heart attack in Washington, DC in 1895.
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