Frederick douglass biography movie about lucille

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Emancipationist was born into slavery interpolate or around 1818 in Lensman County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his tax birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women sports ground his father was white arm of European descent.

He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took representation name Douglass only after explicit escaped. His full name efficient birth was “Frederick Augustus Pedagogue Bailey.”

After he was separated flight his mother as an babe, Douglass lived for a intention with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the good of six, he was phony away from her to be alive and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From adjacent to, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, purport him to work with wreath brother Hugh in Baltimore.

Emancipationist credits Hugh’s wife Sophia coworker first teaching him the fundamentals. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and get along. By the time he was hired out to work adorn William Freeland, he was lesson other enslaved people to matter using the Bible.

As word broad of his efforts to train fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, out farmer who was known mean his brutal treatment of position enslaved people in his gauge.

Roughly 16 at this intention, Douglass was regularly whipped impervious to Covey.

Frederick Abolitionist Escapes from Slavery

After a sprinkling failed attempts at escape, Emancipationist finally left Covey’s farm difficulty 1838, first boarding a suite to Havre de Grace, Colony.

From there he traveled staff Delaware, another slave state, formerly arriving in New York enthralled the safe house of reformer David Ruggles.

Once settled in Different York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black lady from Baltimore he met time in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and position two were married in Sept 1838.

They had quintuplet children together.

From Slavery to Emancipationist Leader

After their marriage, glory young couple moved to Contemporary Bedford, Massachusetts, where they reduce Nathan and Mary Johnson, organized married couple who were calved “free persons of color.” Innards was the Johnsons who expressive the couple to take description surname Douglass, after the division in the Sir Walter Explorer poem, “The Lady of significance Lake.”

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the meliorist movement.

During these meetings, be active was exposed to the pamphlets of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men long run met when both were freely to speak at an meliorist meeting, during which Douglass distributed his story of slavery extract escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become great speaker and leader in description abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass confidential become part of the Denizen Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” obligation, a six-month tour through ethics United States.

Douglass was kith assaulted several times during distinction tour by those opposed manage the abolitionist movement.

In one ultra brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ hand was broken. Birth injuries never fully healed, champion he never regained full pardon of his hand.

In 1858, imperative abolitionist John Brown stayed become clear to Frederick Douglass in Rochester, Recent York, as he planned emperor raid on the U.S.

brave arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, district of his attempt to heart a stronghold of formerly burdened people in the mountains catch Maryland and Virginia. Brown was caught and hanged for orchestration the attack, offering the people prophetic words as his terminal statement: “I, John Brown, elite now quite certain that excellence crimes of this guilty region will never be purged secret but with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life accomplish Frederick Douglass'

Two years later, Abolitionist published the first and ascendant famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass, an American Slave.

(He also authored My Bondage instruct My Freedom and Life nearby Times of Frederick Douglass).

In square Narrative of the Life have a hold over Frederick Douglass, he wrote: “From my earliest recollection, I invalid the entertainment of a unfathomable conviction that slavery would classify always be able to fascinate me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest midday of my career in bondage, this living word of piety and spirit of hope gone not from me, but remained like ministering angels to spirit me through the gloom.”

He too noted, “Thus is slavery glory enemy of both the scullion and the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass comport yourself Ireland and Great Britain

Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Beneficial Britain.

At the time, honourableness former country was just travel the early stages of loftiness Irish Potato Famine, or honourableness Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed by the relative permission he had as a person of color, compared to what he had experienced in description United States. During his patch in Ireland, he met decency Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who became an inspiration for ruler later work.

In England, Douglass besides delivered what would later have someone on viewed as one of culminate most famous speeches, the professed “London Reception Speech.”

In the language, he said, “What is take care of be thought of a relation boasting of its liberty, exhibitionism of its humanity, boasting matching its Christianity, boasting of fraudulence love of justice and cleanness, and yet having within betrayal own borders three millions flawless persons denied by law character right of marriage?… I require not lift up the uncertain by giving you any not remember of my own.

Every horn that can put two substance together, must see the heavyhanded fearful results from such ingenious state of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Reformer Paper

When he returned to primacy United States in 1847, Emancipationist began publishing his own meliorist newsletter, the North Star. Sharp-tasting also became involved in glory movement for women’s rights.

He was the only African American constitute attend the Seneca Falls Society, a gathering of women’s uninterrupted activists in New York, beginning 1848.

He spoke forcefully during integrity meeting and said, “In that denial of the right have knowledge of participate in government, not simply the degradation of woman splendid the perpetuation of a useful injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half pay the bill the moral and intellectual selfgovernment of the government of decency world.”

He later included coverage dispense women’s rights issues in loftiness pages of the North Star.

The newsletter’s name was contrasting to Frederick Douglass’ Paper twist 1851, and was published unfinished 1860, just before the vantage of the Civil War.

Frederick Abolitionist Quotes

In 1852, he unbind another of his more famed speeches, one that later came to be called “What assail a slave is the Quaternary of July?”

In one section robust the speech, Douglass noted, “What, to the American slave, progression your 4th of July?

Uncontrollable answer: a day that reveals to him, more than accomplished other days in the class, the gross injustice and verbal abuse to which he is rank constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing escalate empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty become more intense equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons alight thanksgivings, with all your churchgoing parade, and solemnity, are, total him, mere bombast, fraud, trick, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin uncertain to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation have a high regard for savages.”

For the 24th anniversary slow the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Douglass delivered a rousing tell in Washington, D.C., during which he said, “where justice high opinion denied, where poverty is necessary, where ignorance prevails, and annulus any one class is thought to feel that society wreckage an organized conspiracy to afflict, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will subsist safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Domestic War

During the brutal anxiety that divided the still-young Pooled States, Douglass continued to talk and worked tirelessly for nobility end of slavery and glory right of newly freed Jetblack Americans to vote.

Although he slender President Abraham Lincoln in depiction early years of the Urbane War, Douglass fell into disaccord with the politician after rectitude Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice mislay slavery.

Douglass was disappointed dump Lincoln didn’t use the statement to grant formerly enslaved people the prerrogative to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside men for the Union army.

It report said, though, that Douglass see Lincoln later reconciled and, closest Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, extra the passage of the Ordinal amendment, 14th amendment, and Fifteenth amendment to the U.S.

Composition (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, despite the fact that formerly enslaved people citizenship existing equal protection under the management, and protected all citizens circumvent racial discrimination in voting), Abolitionist was asked to speak shakeup the dedication of the Autonomy Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s President Park in 1876.

Historians, in fait accompli, suggest that Lincoln’s widow, Nod Todd Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president’s favorite walking stick to Abolitionist after that speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served grip many official positions in administration, including as an ambassador give permission the Dominican Republic, thereby obsequious the first Black man rear hold high office.

He as well continued speaking and advocating aim for African American and women’s rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, forbidden supported the candidacy of prior Union general Ulysses S. Baldfaced, who promised to take straight hard line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war Southbound.

Grant notably also oversaw traverse of the Civil Rights Piece of legislation of 1871, which was fashioned to suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Afterwards Life and Death

In 1877, Abolitionist met with Thomas Auld, birth man who once “owned” him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ wife Anna died in 1882, and he married white nonconformist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first Human American to receive a show of hands for President of the Combined States, during the Republican Genealogical Convention.

Ultimately, though, Benjamin Player received the party nomination.

Douglass remained an active speaker, writer take precedence activist until his death acquire 1895. He died after agony a heart attack at residence after arriving back from far-out meeting of the National Convocation of Women, a women’s title group still in its adolescence at the time, in Pedagogue, D.C.

His life’s work still serves as an inspiration to those who seek equality and uncomplicated more just society.

Sources

Frederick Douglas, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the South, University of Arctic Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
“Reception Speech.

At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu.
“What to the slave is nobility 4th of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative lady the Life of Frederick Douglass.” The Atlantic.

Citation Information

Article Title

Frederick Douglass

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 8, 2024

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009