Kenneth B. Morris Jr., co-founder and president of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI), spoke to a University gathering Thursday about his goal of creating one million abolitionists to help end human trafficking, a modern form of slavery.
Morris is a great-great-great-grandson of the 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass as well as a great-great-grandson of the African-American educator Booker T. Washington, who founded Tuskegee University in 1881.
“Slavery is in just about all of the products that we consume every day,” said Morris. “Are we complicit in allowing slavery to thrive and exist today because we want products so cheaply?”
In honor of Douglass’s 200th birthday, Morris and his organization plan to distribute one million hardcover copies of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave to schoolchildren around the country.
Before his talk in the Hawkins-Carlson Room of Rush Rhees Library, University President Richard Feldman presented Morris with the Frederick Douglass Medal for his commitment to civic education that “embodies values that the University of Rochester’s faculty, students, and staff aspire to achieve.”
Morris’s visit was sponsored by the University’s Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies and the Humanities Project.
