In remarks made at an event to mark Black History Month in February 2017, Donald Trump name-checked Frederick Douglass with a vagueness that led many to believe he had no idea who he was. Demonstrating rather more knowledge of Douglass than the fortyfifth president of the United States, Alex Salmond in 2009 quoted both his letter from Ayr and his address in Rochester, and alluded to the inscription in the first copy of Currie's Works he owned. None of these texts was widely known at the time. They had only recently been reprinted or reproduced, and barely discussed even within academia. More broadly, this political intervention would not have been possible without decades of research and public engagement in Scotland excavating the country's slavery past.

Scholars have illuminated the efforts of Scots who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, as well as those who made their fortunes from it and left their mark on town and country alike. In turn this has inspired artists, creative writers, film-makers and musicians, while literary critics have teased out the frequent, if subdued, references to slavery in Scottish literature. It has generated exhibitions, conferences, talks, walking tours, street performances, websites, mobile apps, radio and television programmes, and resource packs for teachers and youth leaders. Activities gathered momentum in 2007, the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the slave trade, and a wide variety of initiatives formed part of the Empire Cafe, a programme of events at Glasgow's Briggait during the Commonwealth Games 2014. Black History Month has, predictably, served as the focus for many of these undertakings, which eventually achieved a level of official recognition in 2017 when Glasgow's Lord Provost hosted an evening at the City Chambers and announced plans for a working group to look into how best civic authorities can better acknowledge the city's colonial and imperial history.

Some of this work has recognised the importance of Douglass. George Shepperson wrote three pioneering articles on Douglass and the ‘Send Back the Money’ campaign in the 1950s, and further research since has built on his work. Douglass's Scottish visit has been the subject of two BBC radio documentaries, and marked by several events during Black History Month, including the re-enactment of a speech by Jim Muotune.