Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, but why is he famous?
Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass escaped and became a prominent human rights activist and public speaker. He was a leader in the abolitionist movement and became the first black citizen to receive a vote for President of the United States in 1872.
Read on to learn more about Frederick Douglass’s incredible life and prominence in the 19th century.
From Slavery to Freedom
Though he would go on to become a nationally recognized orator and government official, Frederick Douglass was born into salvery in Talbot County, Maryland. Separated from his mother as an infant, Douglass resided with his maternal grandmother until he was moved to the Wye House plantation at the age of six.
He was then “given” to the family of Hugh Auld in Baltimore, where he was surreptitiously taught to read with the aid of Hugh’s wife and awakened to a world of possibilities.
Despite two previous failed attempts to escape his enslavement, Douglass’s determination was unfaltering and he finally succeeded in 1838 with the assistance of Anna Murray, a free Black woman with whom Douglass had fallen in love.
He escaped to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York, with the identification papers of a free black man and a sailor’s uniform, procured by Murray. She quickly joined him and after their marriage, Anna and Frederick settled in New Bedfordshire, Massachusetts, where Douglass became involved with the abolitionist movement.
Speaking of his arrival in New York, Douglass wrote, “A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the ‘quick round of blood,’ I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life”.
He would become the first African American to be nominated as Vice President of the United States in 1872.
The Abolitionist Movement
Douglass began to tell the story of his slavery and freedom at abolitionist meetings, and his eloquence soon elevated his position, leading him to a new career as a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachussets.
After a trip to Great Britain and Ireland, to avoid being recaptured, Douglass returned and invested money from English supporters into establishing his own abolitionist newspaper, titled ‘The North Star’.
He was a prolific writer and speaker and in an address delivered in New York the same year, Douglass said “I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this Country do not know me—do not recognize me as a man.”
He wrote three versions of his best-selling autobiography in his lifetime, which remains famous to this day and which served to counteract arguments for the intellectual incapacity of slaves.
He remained an influential supporter of the abolitionist movement and his fame and reputation got him a meeting with Abraham Lincoln, about the treatment of black soldiers during the Civil War.
In 1886, for the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass said, “where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Women’s Rights
Douglass revealed a commitment to women’s suffrage when he was the only African American to attend the first women’s rights convention in New York.
He would continue to support this cause in ‘The North Star’ and wrote, “we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for man”.
In his biography Douglass wrote, “there was no foundation in reason or justice for woman’s exclusion from the right of choice in the selection of the persons who should frame the laws, and thus shape the destiny of all the people, irrespective of sex”.
Watch the YouTube video below for a mini biography of Frederick Douglass’s life.