About Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a prolific African American leader and activist. He was born in 1818, to an enslaved African American woman and an unknown white man, learned to read and write while enslaved in Baltimore, and began educating other slaves. In 1838, Douglass escaped from slavery and settled in Massachusetts, where he began giving speeches against slavery and wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography detailing his own experience as a slave.

During the Civil War, Douglass worked toward emancipation and continued his work as an abolitionist, serving five presidents in various positions. A lifelong activist, Douglass wrote in his autobiography, “Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life.”