Nancy Davis Kho

"There's a woman who grew up in my town who I think you should write about." So began a conversation with my sister three thousand miles away, from her home in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, in September 2006.

The woman was Helen Pitts, born in 1838 and known primarily as the second wife of famed orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. She had grown up, like me, in quiet upstate New York, and, also like me, had married a man of a different race. (My husband is the son of an Indonesian Chinese father and a white mother.)

There, our commonalities stopped. The occasion of me marrying a Chinese man  in 1992 garnered virtually no controversy, and where we now live in Oakland, California,  mixed race families seem more the rule than the exception. In the space of one generation, my marriage and my sister's adoption of my African-american niece have transformed the complexion of my WASP family, mirroring a general trend in American society.

But when Helen married the widowed Frederick  in 1884, mixed race marriages were still a rarity and, indeed, outlawed in many states. And Frederick Douglass was not just a black man, but the "Lion of Anacostia," one of  the most famous men in the country. Helen's abolitionist parents and Frederick's incredulous adult children were united in their opposition to the marriage, and the newspapers had a heyday over the 20 year difference in their ages and Helen's supposed lack of education.

I was intrigued. How did Helen withstand the public derision? And what forces had forged her, taking her from relatively humble beginnings to become the wife of one of the bravest and most principled American heros?

In the process of writing The Second Mrs. Douglass, my research has taken me from the still-pristine shores of Honeoye Lake where Helen grew up, to an Underground Railroad Conference in my hometown of Rochester, to the magnificent home in the Anacostia district of Washington, Cedar Hill, that Frederick and Helen shared. Historians and archivists from Mount Holyoke to Norfolk to the Library of Congress have helped shape my understanding of events, as have books too numerous to list.  As anyone might have guessed, Helen's story was far more complex and intriguing than she'd been given credit for.

When I attended the Underground Railroad Conference in September 2007, a common theme and challenge emerged: tell the stories. Without sharing our knowledge of the bravery of the people who made the Underground Railroad a reality, it will disappear, as ephemeral in memory as it was in the slave's dreams.

And so I've taken up the challenge to tell one story: that of Helen Pitts, her lifelong crusade for human equality, and her devotion to Frederick Douglass, who rose from slavery to help transform America into a more equal union.