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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (1817?–1895) was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He ran away from slavery in 1838 by boarding a train in Baltimore wearing a sailor's suit made by his future wife, Anna Murray, and carrying borrowed seaman's papers. He joined his fiancée in New York; they married, then traveled on to Massachusetts. A caulker of ships by trade, Douglass found difficulty getting a job because of prejudice among white workers. He was surprised to encounter so much racial antagonism among Northern whites.
Douglass, an avid reader of The Liberator, began attending anti-slavery meetings. After giving a speech at a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting in 1841, Garrison urged Douglass to become a lecturer for the society. Douglass was so articulate that people did not believe he had been a slave. To prove that he had indeed been enslaved, Douglass published his Narrative in 1845. Because he gave names, places, and dates, he had to flee to England to evade recapture. In 1846 his supporters in England raised money to buy his freedom so that he could return to the U.S. |