Welcome to Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menki.

It was six blocks from Amy's house to the publishing office.

In the morning, she and Isaac would even walk together.

His pharmacy was only one block farther.

I like to picture them walking side by side.

Isaac's neatly trimmed beard, worn in, what today might be called an amish style.

With a winter as cold as the one in February of 1848, Amy no doubt would have worn a heavy

wrap.

When they reached Buffalo Street, today's main street in Rochester, we might imagine

Amy holding a gloved hand up to wave as Isaac continued on to open the pharmacy, where

he filled prescriptions from Rochester's doctors and sold oils, paints, dyes, salves,

and various instruments.

Amy would have stepped into the publishing office for the North Star.

There was plenty of work to do.

Through the doors, Amy passed the office where Frederick Douglass and his business partner

William C. Nell were preparing the print the next issue.

The summer before, Douglass had traveled west through Pennsylvania, as far as Ohio, where

he had been mocked, attacked, and run off stages by white mobs.

But across the Midwest, he had also been welcomed by black communities, and Douglass knew he needed

to continue supporting them.

Rather than retreat to Boston, Douglass moved to Rochester, the point between the coast

and the frontier, where the message could fly out to a nation.

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