Frederick Douglass
(1818-1895)
Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey the son of a
slave woman and a white man, Frederick was raised by his grandparents in
slavery. He learned the ship building trade in Baltimore from age
eight to fifteen. He was then sent to a brutal farm where he endured the
worst treatment of slaves. He ran away in 1838 and fled north to New
Bedford, Massachusetts marrying his wife along the way. At 23 years
old, Douglass gave a stirring, eloquent speech about his life as a slave
at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in
Nantucket. Douglass would continue to give speeches for the rest of his
life and would become a leading spokesperson for the abolition of
slavery and for racial equality. He conferred with Abraham Lincoln
during the Civil War and recruited northern blacks for the Union Army.
He was the keynote speaker at the unveiling of the at
the unveiling of the Freedmen's Memorial in Memory of Abraham Lincoln
in Washington, D. C.
After the War he fought for the rights of women and African Americans
alike. working until the last, Douglass died in 1895 after attending a
meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. He is
buried in Rochester, New York.