Dear Frederick Douglass,

Dearest Great-Great-Grandfather Frederick Douglass,
Remember on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008, I explained to you what an historic day it was and asked you to please be with me in the voting booth so that, together, we could cast my vote on the touch screen by placing our fingers on the name Barack Obama for president of the United States. Today I'm writing to tell you a new spirit of hope rises all over the world. Barack Obama, a man, like you, the product of two races, has been chosen to represent all Americans equally—as was your dream. And, like you, he will find that the hope he inspires is only a beginning. (Articled continued below...)

Nearly 150 years ago, you helped free 4 million Americans of African decent from a life of servitude. A frenzy of hope followed and with it came an expectation that the same document that guaranteed our freedom would also guarantee our equal rights. Many generations have come and gone since. And, as anxious as we are to claim victory in the long struggle for equality, perhaps this Inauguration Day should be seen as a plateau and not the peak.

As with any struggle there has been pain along the way. Your own great grandson, Frederick Douglass III, succumbed to the burden of expectation. Many believed he was destined to become the same kind of iconic leader you were, but alas there are so very few like you. This Frederick Douglass was a brilliant man in his own right, a surgeon, and he was the father I never knew having taken his own life six months before I was born.

You have always been alive in me. Since I was a little girl I have worked to keep the name of Frederick Douglass in the consciousness of America; not just a name in history, but as a relevant figure in the world today.

My three adult children and I created the Frederick Douglass Family Foundation as a means of preserving your legacy and telling people about the current crisis of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. There are more women, children and men living in a state of servitude today than at any time in the past. We want to do what you and the abolitionists did in the 19th century and shed light on the inhumanity of slavery to inspire aggressive measures to help end it.