Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland but at the age of 21 he escaped to Massachusetts. Due to the danger of being re-captured he fled to Ireland and Britain where his supporters purchased his freedom allowing him to return to America. He was a most powerful speaker against slavery and his autobiography was widely read on both sides of the Atlantic. In My Bondage and My Freedom he wrote:

“Once aroused by the silver trump of knowledge, my spirit was roused to eternal wakefulness. Liberty! The inestimable right of every man, had, for me, converted every object into an asserter of this great right. It was heard in every sound, and beheld in every object. It was ever present, to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. The more beautiful and charming the smiles of nature, the more horrible and desolate was my condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, and heard nothing without hearing it. I do not exaggerate, when I say, that it looked from every star, smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”

Prior to the American Civil War Douglass was the most widely known black man in the country. After the war he worked tirelessly for the equality of African

Americans until his death.