Frederick Douglass

Social reformer, abolitionist, legendary orator, educator, writer, and statesman

After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, earning acclaim for his powerful speeches and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). After the Civil War, Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, it covered events during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported women’s suffrage, and held several public offices. Without his approval, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice-Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket.