Leslie Leonard, a PhD candidate in the English Department, recently published an annotated edition of a never-before-published Frederick Douglass essay written in 1894. The essay, along with Leonard's introduction, was published in the fall 2021 issue of J19. Leonard discovered the text in the Library of Congress archives; it offers meaningful insight into Douglass's work at the end of his life, his views on Reconstruction and continued anti-Black violence, and the long afterlife of slavery in which we still live today.
Leonard is a scholar of nineteenth-century American literature and is currently using an Andrew W. Mellon short-term research fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society in order to critically engage with the emergent idea of personal responsibility in the nineteenth century, particularly as it conflicted with established norms of individual duty.