Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.

After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as an enslaved person 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 an 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 his life up to those dates. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and he held several public offices. Without his knowledge or consent, Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States, as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the Equal Rights Party ticket. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass's willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Early life and slavery

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. The plantation was between Hillsboro and Cordova; his birthplace was likely his grandmother's cabin east of Tappers Corner and west of Tuckahoe Creek. In his first autobiography, Douglass stated: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it." In successive autobiographies, he gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817.

Birth family

Douglass's enslaved mother was of African descent and his father, who may have been her master, was apparently of European descent; in his Narrative (1845), Douglass wrote: "My father was a white man." Douglass's genetic heritage likely also included Native American. Douglass said his mother Harriet Bailey gave him his name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and, after he escaped to the North in September 1838, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped his two middle names.

He later wrote of his earliest times with his mother:

<blockquote>The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing. ... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. ... It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. ... I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.</blockquote>

After separation from his mother during infancy, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother Betsy Bailey, who was also enslaved, and his maternal grandfather Isaac, who was free. Betsy would live until 1849. Frederick's mother remained on the plantation about away, visiting Frederick only a few times before her death when he was 7 years old.

Returning much later, about 1883, to purchase land in Talbot County that was meaningful to him, he was invited to address "a colored school":

Early learning and experience

The Auld family

At the age of six, Douglass was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Wye House plantation, where Aaron Anthony worked as overseer After Anthony died in 1826, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas's brother Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia Auld in Baltimore. From the day he arrived, Sophia saw to it that Douglass was properly fed and clothed, and that he slept in a bed with sheets and a blanket. Douglass described her as a kind and tender-hearted woman, who treated him "as she supposed one human being ought to treat another." Douglass felt that he was lucky to be in the city, where he said enslaved people were almost freemen, compared to those on plantations.

When Douglass was about 12 years old, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. Hugh Auld disapproved, feeling that literacy would encourage enslaved people to desire freedom. Douglass later referred to this as the "first decidedly antislavery lecture" he had ever heard. Very well', thought I," wrote Douglass. Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.' I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom."

Under her husband's influence, Sophia came to believe that education and slavery were incompatible and one day snatched a newspaper away from Douglass. She stopped teaching him altogether and hid all potential reading materials, including her Bible, from him.

Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself to read and write. He later often said, "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom." As Douglass began to read newspapers, pamphlets, political materials, and books of every description, this new realm of thought led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, an anthology that he discovered at about age 12, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights. First published in 1797, the book is a classroom reader, containing essays, speeches, and dialogues, to assist students in learning reading and grammar. He later learned that his mother had also been literate, about which he would later declare:

<blockquote>I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of prejudices—only too much credit, not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.</blockquote>

William Freeland

When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he "gathered eventually more than thirty male slaves on Sundays, and sometimes even on weeknights, in a Sabbath literacy school."

Edward Covey

In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh ("[a]s a means of punishing Hugh," Douglass later wrote). Thomas sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker". He whipped Douglass so frequently that his wounds had little time to heal. Douglass later said the frequent whippings broke his body, soul, and spirit. The 16-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings, however, and fought back. After Douglass won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again.

Recounting his beatings at Covey's farm in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass described himself as "a man transformed into a brute!" Still, Douglass came to see his physical fight with Covey as life-transforming, and he introduced the story in his autobiography as such: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."

Escape from slavery

In 1835 Hugh Auld hired Douglass out to William Gardiner to be a ship caulker in his shipyard in Fell's Point, Baltimore. He suffered abuse by white workers who feared competition from slave labor.

Douglass first tried to escape from Freeland, who had hired him from his owner, but was unsuccessful. In 1837, Douglass met and fell in love with Anna Murray, a free Black woman in Baltimore about five years his senior. Her free status strengthened his belief in the possibility of gaining his own freedom. Murray encouraged him and supported his efforts by aid and money.

thumb|upright|[[Anna Murray Douglass, Douglass's wife for 44 years, portrait c. 1860]]

On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by boarding a northbound train of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad in Baltimore. The area where he boarded was formerly thought to be a short distance east of the train depot, in a recently developed neighborhood between the modern neighborhoods of Harbor East and Little Italy. This depot was at President and Fleet Streets, east of "The Basin" (today the Inner Harbor) of the Port of Baltimore, on the northwest branch of the Patapsco River. Research cited in 2021, however, suggests that Douglass in fact boarded the train at the Canton Depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad on Boston Street, in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore, further east.

Douglass reached Havre de Grace, Maryland, in Harford County, in the northeast corner of the state, along the southwest shore of the Susquehanna River, which flowed into the Chesapeake Bay. Although this placed him only some from the Maryland–Pennsylvania state line, it was easier to continue by rail through Delaware, another slave state. Dressed in a sailor's uniform provided to him by Murray, who also gave him part of her savings to cover his travel costs, he carried identification papers and protection papers that he had obtained from a free Black seaman.

Douglass crossed the wide Susquehanna River by the railroad's steam-ferry at Havre de Grace to Perryville on the opposite shore, in Cecil County, then continued by train across the state line to Wilmington, Delaware, a large port at the head of the Delaware Bay. From there, because the rail line was not yet completed, he went by steamboat along the Delaware River farther northeast to the "Quaker City" of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery stronghold. He continued to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York City. His entire journey to freedom took less than 24 hours. Douglass later wrote of his arrival in New York City:

Once Douglass had arrived, he sent for Murray to follow him north to New York. She brought the basic supplies for them to set up a home. They were married on September 15, 1838, by a Black Presbyterian minister, just eleven days after Douglass had reached New York. He described this approach in his last biography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass:

<blockquote>I was not more than thirteen years old when, in my loneliness and destitution, I longed for some one to whom I could go, as to a father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were but natural rebels against his government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I consulted a good coloured man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to "cast all my care upon God." This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, and especially did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible.</blockquote>

Douglass was mentored by Rev. Charles Lawson, and, early in his activism, he often included biblical allusions and religious metaphors in his speeches. Although a believer, he strongly criticized religious hypocrisy and accused slaveholders of "wickedness", lack of morality, and failure to follow the Golden Rule. In this sense, Douglass distinguished between the "Christianity of Christ" and the "Christianity of America" and considered religious slaveholders and clergymen who defended slavery as the most brutal, sinful, and cynical of all who represented "wolves in sheep's clothing".

In What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, an oration Douglass gave in 1852 at the Corinthian Hall of Rochester, he sharply criticized the attitude of religious people who kept silent about slavery, and he charged that ministers committed a "blasphemy" when they taught it as sanctioned by religion. He considered that a law passed to support slavery was "one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty" and said that pro-slavery clergymen within the American Church "stripped the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form", and "an abomination in the sight of God". and he expressed his happiness to know that a group of ministers in Belfast had refused to admit slaveholders as members of the Church.

On his return to the United States, Douglass founded the North Star, a weekly publication with the motto "Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and all we are Brethren." In his 1848 "Letter to Thomas Auld", Douglass denounced his former slaveholder for leaving Douglass's family illiterate:

After Douglass's powerful words, the attendees passed the resolution.

In the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass wrote an editorial in The North Star to press the case for women's rights. He recalled the "marked ability and dignity" of the proceedings and briefly conveyed several arguments of the convention and feminist thought of the time.

On the first count, Douglass acknowledged the "decorum" of the participants in the face of disagreement. In the remainder, he discussed the primary document that emerged from the conference, a Declaration of Sentiments, and the "infant" feminist cause. He criticized opponents of women's rights: "A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of woman." He also noted the link between abolitionism and feminism, the overlap between the communities.

His opinion as the editor of a prominent newspaper carried weight, and he stated the position of The North Star explicitly: "We hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man." This letter, written a week after the convention, reaffirmed the first part of the paper's slogan, "right is of no sex."

thumb|Memorial Rock at AME Zion, Newburgh, New York

After the Civil War, when the 15th Amendment giving Black men the right to vote was being debated, Douglass split with the Stanton-led faction of the women's rights movement. Douglass supported the amendment, which would grant suffrage to Black men. Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it limited the expansion of suffrage to Black men; she predicted its passage would delay for decades the cause for women's right to vote. Stanton argued that American women and Black men should band together to fight for universal suffrage, and opposed any bill that split the issues.

Douglass thought such a strategy was too risky, that there was barely enough support for Black men's suffrage. He feared that linking the cause of women's suffrage to that of Black men would result in failure for both. Douglass argued that white women, already empowered by their social connections to fathers, husbands, and brothers, at least vicariously had the vote. Black women, he believed, would have the same degree of empowerment as white women once Black men had the vote.

thumb|Frederick Douglass in 1856, around 38 years of age

In 1850, Douglass was elected the vice president of the American League of Colored Laborers, the first Black labor union in the United States, which he had also helped found. Meanwhile, in 1851, he merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which was published until 1859.

On July 5, 1852, Douglass delivered an address in Corinthian Hall at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. This speech eventually became known as "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"; one biographer called it "perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given." In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester. Douglass was one of five people whose names were attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause. The other four were Amos Noë Freeman, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O. Wagoner, and George Boyer Vashon.

Like many abolitionists, Douglass believed that education would be crucial for African Americans to improve their lives; he was an early advocate for school desegregation. In the 1850s, Douglass observed that New York's facilities and instruction for African American children were vastly inferior to those for European Americans. Douglass called for court action to open all schools to all children. He said that full inclusion within the educational system was a more pressing need for African Americans than political issues such as suffrage.

John Brown

thumb|Douglass argued against John Brown's plan to attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, painting by [[Jacob Lawrence]]

On March 12, 1859, Douglass met with radical abolitionists John Brown, George DeBaptiste, and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation. Douglass met Brown again when Brown visited his home two months before leading the raid on Harpers Ferry. Brown penned his Provisional Constitution during his two-week stay with Douglass. Also staying with Douglass for over a year was Shields Green, a fugitive slave whom Douglass was helping, as he often did.

Shortly before the raid, Douglass, taking Green with him, traveled from Rochester, via New York City, to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Brown's communications headquarters. He was recognized there by Black people, who asked him for a lecture. Douglass agreed, although he said his only topic was slavery. Green joined him on the stage; Brown, incognito, sat in the audience. A white reporter, referring to "Nigger Democracy", called it a "flaming address" by "the notorious Negro Orator".

There, in an abandoned stone quarry for secrecy, Douglass and Green met with Brown and John Henri Kagi, to discuss the raid. After discussions lasting, as Douglass put it, "a day and a night", he disappointed Brown by declining to join him, considering the mission suicidal. To Douglass's surprise, Green went with Brown instead of returning to Rochester with Douglass. Anne Brown said that Green told her that Douglass promised to pay him on his return, but David Blight called this "much more ex post facto bitterness than reality".

Almost all that is known about this incident comes from Douglass. It is clear that it was of immense importance to him, both as a turning point in his life—not accompanying John Brown—and its importance in his public image. The meeting was not revealed by Douglass for 20 years. He first disclosed it in his speech on John Brown at Storer College in 1881, trying unsuccessfully to raise money to support a John Brown professorship at Storer, to be held by a Black man. He again referred to it stunningly in his last Autobiography.

After the raid, which took place between October 16 and 18, 1859, Douglass was accused both of supporting Brown and of not supporting him enough. He was nearly arrested on a Virginia warrant, and fled for a brief time to Canada before proceeding onward to England on a previously planned lecture tour, arriving near the end of November. During his lecture tour of Great Britain, on March 26, 1860, Douglass delivered a speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, "The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?", outlining his views on the American Constitution. That month, on the 13th, Douglass's youngest daughter Annie died in Rochester, New York, at age 10. Douglass sailed back from England the following month, traveling through Canada to avoid detection.

Years later, in 1881, Douglass shared a stage at Storer College in Harpers Ferry with Andrew Hunter, the prosecutor who secured Brown's conviction and execution. Hunter congratulated Douglass.

Photography

Douglass considered photography an important tool in ending slavery and racism, and believed that the camera would not lie, even in the hands of a racist white person, as photographs were an excellent counter to many racist caricatures, particularly in Blackface minstrelsy. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, consciously using photography to advance his political views. He never smiled, so as not to play into the racist caricature of a happy enslaved person. He tended to look directly into the camera and confront the viewer with a stern look. In the early 1860s, Douglass wrote four essays on the theory of photography, three of which are published in Picturing Frederick Douglass, and they are discussed in Pictures and Progress.

Civil War years

Before the Civil War

By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous Black men in the country, known for his orations on the condition of the Black race and on other issues such as women's rights. His eloquence gathered crowds at every location. His reception by leaders in England and Ireland added to his stature.

He had been seriously proposed for the congressional seat of his friend and supporter Gerrit Smith, who declined to run again after his term ended in 1854. The possibility "afflicted some with convulsions, others with panic, more with an astonishing flow of exceedingly select and nervous language", "giving vent to all sorts of linguistic enormities." If the House agreed to seat him, which was unlikely, all the Southern members would walk out, so the country would finally be split. No Black person would serve in Congress until 1870, just after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Fight for emancipation and suffrage

thumb|1863 broadside Men of Color to Arms!, written by Douglass

Douglass and the abolitionists argued that because the aim of the Civil War was to end slavery, African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass publicized this view in his newspapers and several speeches. After Lincoln had finally allowed Black soldiers to serve in the Union army, Douglass helped the recruitment efforts, publishing his famous broadside Men of Color to Arms! on March 21, 1863. His sons Charles and Lewis joined the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, led by Robert Gould Shaw. Charles was ill for much of his service, Another son, Frederick Douglass Jr., served as a recruiter.

With the North no longer obliged to return slaves to their owners in the South, Douglass fought for equality for his people. Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of Black soldiers and in 1864 on "how to mobilize the southern slaves of the Confederate states so that they could contribute to the war effort".

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, declared the freedom of all slaves in Confederate-held territory. (Slaves in Union-held areas were not covered because the proclamation was deemed permissible under the Constitution only as a war measure; they were freed with the adoption of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865.) Douglass described the spirit of those awaiting the proclamation: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky ... we were watching ... by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day ... we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries."

During the U.S. Presidential Election of 1864, Douglass supported John C. Frémont, who was the candidate of the abolitionist Radical Democratic Party. Douglass was disappointed that President Lincoln did not publicly endorse suffrage for Black freedmen. Douglass believed that since African American men were fighting for the Union, they deserved the right to vote.

After Lincoln's death

The postwar ratification of the 13th Amendment, on December 6, 1865, outlawed slavery, "except as a punishment for crime." The 14th Amendment provided for birthright citizenship and prohibited the states from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States or denying any "person" due process of law or equal protection of the laws. The 15th Amendment protected all citizens from being discriminated against in voting because of race. After Lincoln was assassinated, Douglass conferred with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of Black suffrage.

thumb|upright|The keynote speaker at the unveiling of the [[Emancipation Memorial, Douglass wrote a critique of the depiction of the Black man "still on his knees".]]

On April 14, 1876, Douglass delivered the keynote speech at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park. He spoke frankly about the complex legacy of Lincoln, noting what he perceived to be both positive and negative attributes of the late president. But Douglass also asked, "Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?" He also said: "Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery...." Most famously, he added: "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."

Reconstruction era

thumb|upright|Frederick Douglass in 1876, around 58 years of age

After the Civil War, Douglass continued to work for equality for African Americans and women. Due to his prominence and activism during the war, Douglass received several political appointments. He served as president of the Reconstruction-era Freedman's Savings Bank.

Meanwhile, white insurgents had quickly arisen in the South after the war, organizing first as secret vigilante groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. Armed insurgency took different forms. Powerful paramilitary groups included the White League and the Red Shirts, both active during the 1870s in the Deep South. They operated as "the military arm of the Democratic Party", turning out Republican officeholders and disrupting elections. Starting 10 years after the war, Democrats regained political power in every state of the former Confederacy and began to reassert white supremacy. They enforced this by a combination of violence, late 19th-century laws imposing segregation and a concerted effort to disfranchise African Americans. New labor and criminal laws also limited their freedom.

To combat these efforts, Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. In 1870, Douglass started his last newspaper, the New National Era, attempting to hold his country to its commitment to equality.

thumb|Douglass's former residence in the [[U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C. He built 2000–2004 17th Street, NW, in 1875.]]

After the midterm elections, Grant signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act) and the second and third Enforcement Acts. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and sending troops there and into other states. Under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made. Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan made him unpopular among many whites but earned praise from Douglass. A Douglass associate wrote that African Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of [Grant's] name, fame and great services."

In 1872, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States, as Victoria Woodhull's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket. He was nominated without his knowledge. Douglass neither campaigned for the ticket nor acknowledged that he had been nominated. In that year, he was presidential elector at large for the State of New York, and took that state's votes to Washington, D.C.

However, in early June of that year, Douglass's third Rochester home, on South Avenue, burned down; arson was suspected. There was extensive damage to the house, its furnishings, and the grounds; in addition, sixteen volumes of the North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper were lost. Douglass then moved to Washington, D.C.

Throughout the Reconstruction era, Douglass continued speaking, emphasizing the importance of work, voting rights and actual exercise of suffrage. His speeches for the twenty-five years following the war emphasized work to counter the racism that was then prevalent in unions. In a November 15, 1867, speech he said: In an 1869 speech entitled "Our Composite Nationality," Describing the freedom to immigrate as a human right, Douglass argued, "I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt."

Douglass spoke at many colleges around the country, including Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 1873.

In 1881, at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Douglass delivered a speech praising John Brown and revealing unknown information about their relationship, including their meeting in an abandoned stone quarry near Chambersburg shortly before the raid. During that same economic crisis, his final newspaper, The New National Era, failed in September. When Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president, he named Douglass United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, making him the first person of color to be so named. The United States Senate voted to confirm him on March 17, 1877. Douglass accepted the appointment, which helped assure his family's financial security.

thumb|[[Frederick Douglass National Historic Site|Cedar Hill, Douglass's house in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., is preserved as a National Historic Site.]]

In 1877, Douglass visited his former enslaver Thomas Auld on his deathbed, and the two men reconciled. Douglass had met Auld's daughter, Amanda Auld Sears, some years prior. She had requested the meeting and had subsequently attended and cheered one of Douglass's speeches. Her father complimented her for reaching out to Douglass. The visit also appears to have brought closure to Douglass, although some criticized his effort.

In 1881, Douglass published the final edition of his autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he updated in 1892. In 1881, he was appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. His wife Anna Murray Douglass died in 1882, leaving the widower devastated. After a period of mourning, Douglass found new meaning from working with activist Ida B. Wells. He remarried in 1884, as mentioned above.

Douglass also continued his speaking engagements and travel, both in the United States and abroad. With new wife Helen, Douglass toured the UK including Wales (possibly by invitation from abolitionist Jessie Donaldson), Ireland, France, Italy, Egypt, and Greece from 1886 to 1887. He became known for advocating Irish Home Rule and supported Charles Stewart Parnell in Ireland.

thumb|Illustration depicting a meeting at the [[Ohio delegation's headquarters for the 1888 Republican National Convention, featuring Douglass (bottom right) as well as Murat Halstead, Benjamin Butterworth, William McKinley, Joseph B. Foraker]]

At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote. That year, Douglass spoke at Claflin College, a historically Black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and the state's oldest such institution.

Many African Americans, called Exodusters, escaped the Klan and racially discriminatory laws in the South by moving to Kansas, where some formed all- Black towns to have a greater level of freedom and autonomy. Douglass favored neither this nor the Back-to-Africa movement. He thought the latter resembled the American Colonization Society, which he had opposed in his youth. In 1892, at an Indianapolis conference convened by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Douglass spoke out against the separatist movements, urging African Americans to stick it out. Speaking in Baltimore in 1894, Douglass said, "I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me."

President Harrison appointed Douglass as the United States's minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and Chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo in 1889, but Douglass resigned the commission in July 1891 when it became apparent that the American President was intent upon gaining permanent access to Haitian territory regardless of that country's desires. In 1892, Haiti made Douglass a co-commissioner of its pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1892, Douglass constructed rental housing for Blacks, now known as Douglass Place, in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. The complex still exists, and in 2003 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Death

thumb|The gravestone of Frederick Douglass, located in [[Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester]]

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and received a standing ovation. Shortly after he returned home, Douglass died of a heart attack. Because the exact date of his birth is unclear, he would have been either 76 or 77 — 76 if he were born after February 20, 1818, or 77 if he were born before or on February 20, 1818.

His funeral was held at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. Although Douglass had attended several churches in the nation's capital, he had a pew here and had donated two standing candelabras when this church had moved to a new building in 1886. He also gave many lectures there, including his last major speech, "The Lessons of the Hour".

Douglass's coffin was transported to Rochester, New York, where he had lived for 25 years, longer than anywhere else in his life. His body was received in state at City Hall, flags were flown at half mast, and schools adjourned. He was buried next to Anna in the Douglass family plot of Mount Hope Cemetery. A marker, erected by the University of Rochester and other friends, describes him as "escaped slave, abolitionist, suffragist, journalist and statesman. Founder of the civil rights movement in America".

1852. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
1857. West Indies Emancipation Speech (If there is no struggle, there is no progress)
1859. Self-Made Men.
1863, July 6. "Speech at National Hall, for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments."
1869. "Our Composite Nationality" As a result of his receptions in Ohio, he was moved to write poetry on at least one other occasion in that state after he had written the poem "Liberty". The handwritten poem is now held in the Xavier University of Louisiana, Archives & Special Collections.

Legacy and honors

thumb|A poster from the [[Office of War Information, Domestic Operations Branch, News Bureau, 1943]]

thumb|A 1965 [[U.S. postage stamp, published during the upsurge of the civil rights movement]]

Biographer David Blight states that Douglass "played a pivotal role in America's Second Founding out of the apocalypse of the Civil War, and he very much wished to see himself as a founder and a defender of the Second American Republic."

Roy Finkenbine argues:

<blockquote>The most influential African American of the nineteenth century, Douglass made a career of agitating the American conscience. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women's rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education, and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted the bulk of his time, immense talent, and boundless energy to ending slavery and gaining equal rights for African Americans. These were the central concerns of his long reform career. Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. And he recognized that African Americans must play a conspicuous role in that struggle. Less than a month before his death, when a young Black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, Douglass replied without hesitation: ″Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!″</blockquote>

In his later years, Douglass spoke out against segregated education, arguing that separate schools for Black children kept them unequal and were contrary to the goals of emancipation. He viewed access to good education as essential for African Americans to achieve full citizenship and to take part in democracy. Douglass insisted that literacy was not just a personal achievement but a shared right. His views on education influenced later generations of Black educators and civil rights leaders who also saw learning as a key part of the fight for racial justice.

The Episcopal Church remembers Douglass with a Lesser Feast annually on its liturgical calendar for February 20, the anniversary of his death. Many public schools have also been named in his honor. Douglass still has living descendants today, such as Ken Morris, who is also a descendant of Booker T. Washington. Other honors and remembrances include:

In 1871, a bust of Douglass was unveiled at Sibley Hall, University of Rochester.
In 1895, the first hospital for Black people in Philadelphia, PA, was named the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital. Black medical professionals, excluded from other facilities, were trained and employed there. In 1948, it merged to form Mercy-Douglass Hospital.
In 1899, a statue of Frederick Douglass was unveiled in Rochester, New York, making Douglass the first African-American to be so memorialized in the country.
In 1921, members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (the first African-American intercollegiate fraternity) designated Frederick Douglass as an honorary member. Douglass thus became the only man to receive an honorary membership posthumously.
The Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, sometimes referred to as the South Capitol Street Bridge, just south of the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., was built in 1950 and named in his honor.
In 1962, his home in Anacostia (Washington, D.C.) became part of the National Park System and in 1988 was designated the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.
In 1965, the United States Postal Service honored Douglass with a stamp in the Prominent Americans series. Additional stamps honoring Douglass were issued in 1995 and 2024.
In 1999, Yale University established the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for works in the history of slavery and abolition, in his honor. The annual $25,000 prize is administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Frederick Douglass to his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
In 2003, Douglass Place, the rental housing units that Douglass built in Baltimore in 1892 for Blacks, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2005, Douglass was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York.
In 2007, the former Troup–Howell Bridge, which carried Interstate 490 over the Genesee River in Rochester, was redesigned and renamed the Frederick Douglass – Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge.
In 2010, the Frederick Douglass Memorial was unveiled at Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park in New York City.
In 2010, the New York Writers Hall of Fame inducted Douglass in its inaugural class.
On June 12, 2011, Talbot County, Maryland, installed a seven-foot (2-meter) bronze statue of Douglass on the lawn of the county courthouse in Easton, Maryland.
On June 19, 2013, a statue of Douglass by Maryland artist Steven Weitzman was unveiled in the United States Capitol Visitor Center as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection, the first statue representing the District of Columbia.
On September 15, 2014, under the leadership of Governor Martin O'Malley a portrait of Frederick Douglass was unveiled at his official residence in Annapolis, Maryland. This painting, by artist Simmie Knox, is the first African-American portrait to grace the walls of Government House. Commissioned by Eddie C. Brown, founder of Brown Capital Management, LLC, the painting was presented at a reception by the Governor.
On January 7, 2015, in honor of Governor Martin O'Malley's last Board of Public Works meeting, a portrait of Frederick Douglass by artist Benjamin Jancewicz was presented to him by Peter Franchot.
In November 2015, the University of Maryland dedicated Frederick Douglass Plaza, an outdoor space where visitors can read quotes and see a bronze statue of Douglass.
On October 18, 2016, the Council of the District of Columbia voted that the city's new name as a State is to be "Washington, D.C.", and that "D.C." is to stand for "Douglass Commonwealth."
On April 3, 2017, the United States Mint began issuing quarters with an image of Frederick Douglass on the reverse, with the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in the background. The coin is part of the America the Beautiful Quarters series.
On May 20, 2018, Douglass was awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Rochester. The degree, which was accepted by Douglass's great-great-great-grandson, was the first posthumous honorary degree that the university had granted.
Douglass gave his last public lecture on February 1, 1895, at West Chester University, 19 days before his death. Today, there is a statue of him on the university campus commemorating this event. The Frederick Douglass Institute has a West Chester University program for advancing multicultural studies across the curriculum and for deepening the intellectual heritage of Douglass.
On September 30, 2019, Newcastle University opened the 'Frederick Douglass Centre', a key teaching component for their School of Computing and Business School. Frederick Douglass stayed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1846 on a street adjacent to the new university campus.
A statue of Douglass located in Rochester, New York's Maplewood Park was vandalized and torn down over the weekend of July 4, 2020.
In 2020, Douglas Park in Chicago, which was named for U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, was renamed Douglass Park, in honor of Frederick and Anna Douglass. In the 1850s the senator had promoted "popular sovereignty" as a middle position on the slavery issue and made "blatant assertions of white superiority." The name change was the result of a multi-year student-led campaign to rename the park.
A plaque on Gilmore Place in Edinburgh, Scotland marks his stay there in 1846. In 2020 a mural of his image was added nearby.
On June 19, 2021, on Boston Street in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, two panels were unveiled at the spot where, as it had shortly before been discovered, Douglass had boarded the train that took him to his freedom from enslavement.
In 2020, the Greater Rochester International Airport was renamed the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport.
On January 18, 2023, Governor Wes Moore was sworn in as governor of Maryland on a Bible owned by Douglass.
In October 2023, it was announced that a plaque commemorating one of Douglass's visits to Liverpool would be placed outside the Everyman Theatre on Hope Street. The theater was built on the original site of Hope Hall, a chapel where Douglass spoke on January 19, 1860.

In popular culture

thumb|right|A 2021 instructional video from the [[National Archives and Records Administration for young learners starring Phil Darius Wallace, an actor who regularly portrays Douglass in performances and recitations]]

Film and television

Robert Hooks portrays Douglass in episode 12 of the 1964-1965 television series Profiles in Courage, a historical anthology series based on John F. Kennedy's 1956 book of the same name.
Robert Guillaume portrays Douglass giving a speech about the American slave trade in the 1985 miniseries North and South (Season 1, episode 3).
Glory (1989) features Douglass, played by Raymond St. Jacques, as a friend of Francis George Shaw's.
In Ken Burns' 1990 documentary The Civil War, Douglass is voiced by actor Morgan Freeman.
The 2004 mockumentary film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America features the figure of Douglass in an alternative history.
In Akeelah and the Bee (2006), characters discuss Douglass near a bronze bust of him by sculptor Tina Allen.
The 2008 documentary film Frederick Douglass and the White Negro tells the story of Douglass in Ireland and the relationship between African and Irish Americans during the American Civil War.
Douglass appears in Freedom, where he is portrayed by Byron Utley.
In the 2015 documentary film The Gettysburg Address, the role of Frederick Douglass is voiced by actor Laurence Fishburne.
A miniseries based on James McBride's 2013 novel, The Good Lord Bird<u>,</u> was released in 2020, with Daveed Diggs as Douglass. Douglass is portrayed negatively.
On February 23, 2022, HBO released a one-hour documentary titled Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches, based on David W. Blight's Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
Douglass was portrayed by Elvis Nolasco in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series Manhunt.
Vondie Curtis-Hall portrays Douglass in the 2025 Netflix miniseries Death by Lightning.

Literature

The 1946 novel A Star Pointed North by Edmund Fuller presents an account of Douglass's life.
Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain (1988) is an alternate-history novel in which John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry succeeded and, instead of the Civil War, the Black slaves emancipated themselves in a massive slave revolt. In this history, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman are the revered founders of a Black state created in the Deep South.
Douglass is a major character in the novel How Few Remain (1997) by Harry Turtledove, depicted in an alternate history in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and Douglass must continue his anti-slavery campaign into the 1880s.
Douglass appears in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994) by George MacDonald Fraser.
Douglass, his wife, and his alleged mistress, Ottilie Assing, are the main characters in Jewell Parker Rhodes' Douglass' Women (New York: Atria Books, 2002).
Douglass is the protagonist of Richard Bradbury's novel Riversmeet (Muswell Press, 2007), a fictionalized account of Douglass's 1845 speaking tour of the British Isles.
Douglass's time in Ireland is fictionalized in Colum McCann's TransAtlantic (2013).
A comedic representation of Douglass is made in James McBride's 2013 novel The Good Lord Bird.
In 2019, author David W. Blight was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for History for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
Douglass features as a character in Sara Sheridan's 2024 novel, The Secrets of Blythswood Square, set in 1846 in Glasgow.

Painting

In 1938–39, African-American artist Jacob Lawrence created The Frederick Douglass series of narrative paintings. They were part of the historical series started by Lawrence in 1937, which included painted panels about prominent Black historical figures such as Toussaint Louverture and Harriet Tubman. During his preparatory work, Lawrence conducted research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, drawing primarily from the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). For this series the artist used a multipanel-plus-caption format that allowed him to develop a serial narrative that was not possible to convey by means of traditional portrait or history painting. Instead of reproducing Douglass's original narratives verbatim, Lawrence constructed his own visual and textual narrative in the form of 32 panels painted in tempera and accompanied with Lawrence's own captions. The structure of the painting series is linear and consists of three parts (the slave, the fugitive, the free man) which offer an epic chronicle of Douglass's transformation from slave to leader in the struggle for the liberation of Black people. The Frederick Douglass series is currently in the Hampton University Museum.
In 2024, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore put up a mural by artist Adam Himoff portraying Douglass "posed in a slim, European-cut suit, high-top white Converse sneakers, and an oversized wristwatch". The mural is a "hand-carved linocut print ... acquired by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as part of their permanent art collection in their NYC headquarters and later transformed into a 21-foot mural displayed in Easton, MD (the birthplace of Frederick Douglass)." Specifically, in 2023, the mural was put up on a "wall outside of the Out of the Fire restaurant" in Easton, Maryland.
In August 2022, "American Prophet: Frederick Douglass in His Own Words," a musical starring Cornelius Smith Jr. as Douglass, was performed at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.
His life is retold in the 1948 two-part radio drama "The Making of a Man" and "The Key to Freedom", presented by Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham.

Explanatory notes

References

External links

Celebrating Frederick Douglass through Transcription Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center. Selected Douglass letters, speeches, and newspaper articles
In the Library: Frederick Douglass Family Materials from the Walter O. Evans Collection The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., April 22, 2019—June 14, 2019.
One Life: Frederick Douglass Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., June 16, 2023 – April 21, 2024. Reviews: "The photos of Frederick Douglass that helped him fight to end slavery", The Washington Post, July 1, 2023. "'One Life: Frederick Douglass' Review: Portrait Taken With a Wide-Angle Lens", The Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2023.
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass "Moving image installation ... across five screens" on view at the National Portrait Gallery, December 8, 2023 - November 26, 2026. Reviews: Video artwork captures the sweep of Frederick Douglass's oratory The Washington Post, January 17, 2024; Grayson, Saisha. A Meditation on the Legacy of Frederick Douglass by Artist and Filmmaker Isaac Julien Smithsonian Magazine, February 28, 2025. Also on display (across ten screens) at the Museum of Modern Art, "MoMA Isaac Julien Lessons of the Hour", May 19 to September 28, 2024.
Mural of Frederick Douglass by Adam Himoff at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore.