Editing Frederick Douglass (section)

==Family life==
[[File:Frederick Douglass - Helen Pitts Douglass (right) her sister Eva Pitts (center).png|thumb|Frederick Douglass after 1884 with his second wife [[Helen Pitts Douglass]] (sitting). The woman standing is her sister Eva Pitts.]]
{{Further|Douglass family}}
Douglass and [[Anna Murray Douglass|Anna Murray]] had five children: [[Rosetta Douglass]], [[Lewis Henry Douglass]], [[Frederick Douglass Jr.]], [[Charles Remond Douglass]], and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten). Charles and Rosetta helped produce his newspapers.

Anna Douglass remained a loyal supporter of her husband's public work. His relationships with [[Julia Griffiths]] and [[Ottilie Assing]], two women with whom he was professionally involved, caused recurring speculation and scandals.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Michelle Nzadi |last1=Keita |first2=James |last2=Jones |contribution=Murray-Douglass, Anna (1813–1882) |editor1-first=Julius E. |editor1-last=Thompson |editor2-first=James L. Jr. |editor2-last=Conyers |editor3-first=Nancy J. |editor3-last=Dawson |title=The Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia |location=Santa Barbara, CA |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-313-31988-4 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sTV8OsmDQPcC&pg=PA125 125]}}</ref> Assing was a journalist recently immigrated from Germany, who first visited Douglass in 1856 seeking permission to translate ''My Bondage and My Freedom'' into German. Until 1872, she often stayed at his house "for several months at a time" as his "intellectual and emotional companion".<ref name="Blight290">{{cite book |last=Blight |first=David W. |author-link=David W. Blight |title=Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-4165-9031-6 |location=New York |pages=290–291, 387}}</ref>

Assing held Anna Douglass "in utter contempt" and was vainly hoping that Douglass would separate from his wife. Douglass biographer David W. Blight concludes that Assing and Douglass "were probably lovers".<ref name="Blight290" /> Though Douglass and Assing are widely believed to have had an intimate relationship, the surviving correspondence contains no proof of such a relationship.<ref>{{cite book |last=Blight |first=David W. |author-link=David W. Blight |title=Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-4165-9031-6 |location=New York |pages=521–522, 529, 570, 572–574}}</ref>

Anna died in 1882. In 1884, Douglass married [[Helen Pitts Douglass|Helen Pitts]], a white suffragist and abolitionist from [[Honeoye, New York]]. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts Jr., an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass's. A graduate of [[Mount Holyoke College]] (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication named ''Alpha'' while living in Washington, D.C. She later worked as Douglass's secretary.<ref>[[Adam Gopnik|Gopnik, Adam]], "American Prophet: The gifts of Frederick Douglass", ''The New Yorker'', October 15, 2018, pp. 81–82</ref>

Assing, who had depression and was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer, committed suicide in France in 1884 after hearing of the marriage.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fatal Attraction |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/01/reviews/990801.01faustt.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180523100911/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/01/reviews/990801.01faustt.html |archive-date=May 23, 2018 |access-date=June 8, 2021 |website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref> Upon her death, Assing bequeathed Douglass a $13,000 [[trust fund]] ({{Inflation|US|13000|1884|fmt=eq|r=-3}}), a "large album", and his choice of books from her library.<ref>{{cite book |last=McFeely |first=William S. |author-link=William S. McFeely |url=https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00will_0 |title=Frederick Douglass |date=1991 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |isbn=978-0-393-02823-2 |location=New York |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00will_0/page/322/mode/2up 322]}}</ref>

The marriage of Douglass and Pitts provoked a storm of controversy, since Pitts was both white and nearly 20 years younger. Many in her family stopped speaking to her; his children considered the marriage a repudiation of their mother. But feminist [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] congratulated the couple.<ref>[http://winningthevote.org/FDouglass.html Frederick Douglass biography] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060211042543/http://winningthevote.org/FDouglass.html|date=February 11, 2006}} at winningthevote.org. Retrieved October 3, 2006.</ref> Douglass responded to the criticisms by saying that his first marriage had been to someone the color of his mother, and his second to someone the color of his father.<ref>{{cite book |first=Marilyn D. |last=Lovett Douglass |contribution=Helen Pitts (1838–1903) |editor1-first=Julius E. |editor1-last=Thompson |editor2-first=James L. Jr. |editor2-last=Conyers |editor3-first=Nancy J. |editor3-last=Dawson |title=The Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia |location=Santa Barbara, CA |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-313-31988-4 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sTV8OsmDQPcC&pg=PA46 46]}}</ref>