Kenneth B. Morris, Jr.

Co-Founder & President

Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives

 

Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. descends from two of the most influential names in American history: he is the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington. Ken continues his family's legacy of anti-slavery and educational work as co-founder and president of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI), a nonprofit organization based in Rochester, New York. His career and life path have been driven by a clear focus on FDFI's mission, "To Build Strong Children and to end systems of exploitation and oppression."

 

Among his many accolades, Ken has been a keynote speaker at the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's annual conference in Luxembourg, received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of La Verne in California, been named as the first man to be awarded the Women's E-News 21 Leaders for the 21st Century Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and appointed to the 2018 Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission, serving as Commission Chair, by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

 

Ken appeared in the 2022 documentaries Abraham Lincoln and The American Presidency with Bill Clinton on the History Channel, the Emmy-nominated Frederick Douglass in Five Speeches on HBO and HBO Max, Becoming Frederick Douglass on PBS (October 2022), and 1000 Years of Slavery on the Smithsonian Channel. Previously, he appeared in the documentaries Civil Warriors and Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner on National Geographic and Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color on the History Channel.

Ken contributed the preface to Isaac Julien's Lessons of the Hour published in 2022, the afterword to Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American published in 2015, and the foreword to the bicentennial edition of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, published in January 2017.

 

Ken received a Bachelor of Arts in Religion degree from the Ecumenical Center for Black Church Studies at the University of La Verne. As did Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, he firmly believes that education is the pathway to freedom.

 

@kbmorrisjr