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 cofounder 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 Vienna and Luxembourg; received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of LaVerne in California; 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, 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, then the afterword to "Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American," published in 2015, as well as the foreword to the bicentennial edition of the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave," published in January 2017.
He contributed the foreword to the Douglass Family Edition of the Narrative published in June 2023 by Frederick Douglass Books, an imprint of Forefront Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Ken received a Bachelor of Arts 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.
Speaking Topics –
- From History to Hope
- Digital Advocacy and Social Media
- Inheriting a Legacy of Activism
- Leadership for a Just World
- Education as a Pathway to Freedom
- Modern-Day Slavery: A Global Crisis
- Building Strong Children
- Storytelling for Social Transformation
