We sit down with Kenneth Morris, the great-great-great grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great-great grandson of Booker T. Washington. Until about ten years ago, Morris says he spent his life hiding from the legacy of his ancestors; he says it was too difficult to live in their shadows. But when he saw a National Geographic story about human trafficking, he felt it was impossible to deny his family’s legacy of abolitionism any longer.
Morris and his mother founded the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives to help educate young people about modern day slavery and its parallels to history. He’s in Rochester to launch a new project that will distribute millions of copies of Douglass' life story to young people across the country. He joins us in studio for the hour.