Frederick Douglass was a free African American ( formerly enslaved in America ) who became a prominent activist, author, public speaker, social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War.
- He taught himself how to read and write. …
- He helped other slaves become literate. …
- He fought a ‘slavebreaker’ …
- He travelled to Britain to avoid re-enslavement. …
- He advocated women’s rights. …
After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War.
Douglass also actively supported women’s suffrage, and held several public offices. Without his permission, 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
