Frederick Douglass Inspiring the Youth of the Negro Race
Cletus Alexander, 1933
In 1933, Cletus Alexander, a student at Dayton Art Institute, submitted designs for a mural titled Frederick Douglass Inspiring the Youth of the Negro Race. Douglass is depicted as a biblical, Moses-like figure with flowing hair and a white beard, wearing traditional red and white robes. Towards the top of the mural are the words from Langston Hughes’ poem, Youth: “We have to-morrow, Bright before us, Like a flame, yesterday a night-gone thing, A sundown name, And dawn today, Broad arch above the road we came, we March!” At the time the mural was painted, it was housed in the MacFarlane Middle School building. After that building was destroyed in 2005, it was removed, restored, and is housed in the Dayton Art Institute.
![Cletus Alexander, Frederick Douglass Inspiring the Youth of the Negro Race, MacFarlane Middle School, Dayton, OH, 1933 [now in Dayton Art Institute].jpg](http://antislavery.ac.uk/files/original/8ac8a6bcca018ca83593093cec8c5c87.jpg "Cletus Alexander, Frederick Douglass Inspiring the Youth of the Negro Race, MacFarlane Middle School, Dayton, OH, 1933 [now in Dayton Art Institute].jpg")
