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Quick Facts
- NAME: Frederick Douglass
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist
- BIRTH DATE: c. February 1818
- DEATH DATE: February 20, 1895
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Tuckahoe, Maryland
- PLACE OF DEATH: Washington, D.C.
- Originally: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Best Known For
Frederick Douglass, a former slave and eminent human rights leader in the abolition movement, was the first black citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank.
Videos see all videos
Frederick Douglass - Full Episode
Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 and used his talents as a writer and orator to fight for emancipation. Douglass edited an abolitionist newspaper, recruited black regiments during the Civil War, and advised President Lincoln.
Frederick Douglass - From Slave to Soldier
In 1863, Frederick Douglass enlists as a recruiting officer for an African American regiment in the Civil War. From "Biography: Frederick Douglass."
Frederick Douglass - Meet John Brown
In the 1850s, Frederick Douglass allied with a passionate white Abolitionist named John Brown, who became a powerful symbol to Douglass for the violent overthrow of the slave system.
Frederick Douglass - Impassioned Speaker
After testifying firsthand to the brutality of slavery at an American Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Nantucket, Frederick Douglass became an overnight success in the Abolitionist arena of public speaking.
Frederick Douglass. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:02, Feb 08, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324
Frederick Douglass [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324, February 08
" Frederick Douglass." 2012. Biography.com 08 Feb 2012, 11:02 http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324
' Frederick Douglass', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324 [accessed Feb 08, 2012]
" Frederick Douglass," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324 (accessed Feb 08, 2012).
Frederick Douglass [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 08]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324.
Frederick Douglass, http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Frederick Douglass, http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Synopsis
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on February 1818?, in Tuckahoe, Maryland. In 1838 he fled. After speaking at a 1841 antislavery convention he felt impelled to write his autobiography in 1845. While speaking abroad, Douglass helped to win many supporters for abolition and for humanitarian reform. During the Civil War Douglass became a consultant to President Abraham Lincoln.
Quotes
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."
"People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."
"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
Profile
(born February 1818?, Tuckahoe, Maryland, U.S.—died February 20, 1895, Washington, D.C.) African American who was one of the most eminent human-rights leaders of the 19th century. His oratorical and literary brilliance thrust him into the forefront of the U.S. abolition movement, and he became the first black citizen to hold high rank in the U.S. government.
Separated as an infant from his slave mother (he never knew his white father), Frederick lived with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation until, at age eight, his owner sent him to Baltimore to live as a house servant with the family of Hugh Auld, whose wife defied state law by teaching the boy to read. Auld, however, declared that learning would make him unfit for slavery, and Frederick was forced to continue his education surreptitiously with the aid of schoolboys in the street. Upon the death of his master, he was returned to the plantation as a field hand at 16. Later, he was hired out in Baltimore as a ship caulker. Frederick tried to escape with three others in 1833, but the plot was discovered before they could get away. Five years later, however, he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a labourer for three years, eluding slave hunters by changing his surname to Douglass.
At a Nantucket, Massachusetts, antislavery convention in 1841, Douglass was invited to describe his feelings and experiences under slavery. These extemporaneous remarks were so poignant and naturally eloquent that he was unexpectedly catapulted into a new career as agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. From then on, despite heckling and mockery, insult, and violent personal attack, Douglass never flagged in his devotion to the abolitionist cause.
To counter skeptics who doubted that such an articulate spokesman could ever have been a slave, Douglass felt impelled to write his autobiography in 1845, revised and completed in 1882 as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Douglass's account became a classic in American literature as well as a primary source about slavery from the bondsman's viewpoint. To avoid recapture by his former owner, whose name and location he had given in the narrative, Douglass left on a two-year speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland. Abroad, Douglass helped to win many new friends for the abolition movement and to cement the bonds of humanitarian reform between the continents.
Douglass returned with funds to purchase his freedom and also to start his own antislavery newspaper, the North Star (later Frederick
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