05/19/2026
In 1886, Frederick Douglass journeyed across Europe, capturing his thoughts vividly as he experienced the sights and splendors of the continent, as well as many sobering realities of the peoples and hardships.
On a visit to France, visiting Roman ruins in Arles, triggered a deep moment of reflection for how far both civilization and he had come. The writings from this trip offer a small insight into Douglass’s mind in his final years.
“We were taken through it [the amphitheater at Arles] and shown the various apartments where the lions were kept, and their way out of their dens to the arena where they were lashed to fury for their fierce and bloody contests with men. Looking upon this old structure, with its memory of the terrible strifes for which it was built, and the amusement it once strangely afforded to thousands of men and women, one cannot help feeling thankful that we live in a more enlightened age. There is, however, enough of the wild beast still left in our modern human life to remind us of our kinship with the people who built this amphitheater, and who found pleasure in the brute encounters of men and beasts in its arena.”
Image: NPS / Alice Longfellow, 1927
