Frederick Douglass
By English III student
Just the facts
- NAME: Frederick Douglass
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist
- BIRTH DATE: c. February 1818
- DEATH DATE: February 20, 1895
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Tuckahoe, Maryland
- PLACE OF DEATH: Washington, D.C.
- ORIGINALLY: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Abolitionist
Person who is involved in the movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The abolitionist movement in the North was led by agitators such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier, former slaves such as Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Author
His three autobiographies are considered important works of the slave narrative tradition as well as classics of American autobiography.
Orator
For 16 years he edited an influential black newspaper and achieved international fame as an inspiring and persuasive speaker and writer. In thousands of speeches and editorials, he levied a powerful indictment against slavery and racism, provided an indomitable voice of hope for his people, embraced antislavery politics and preached his own brand of American ideals.
Achievements
An abolitionist, writer and orator Frederick Douglass was the most important black American leader of the nineteenth century. Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he was the son of a slave woman and, probably, her white master. Upon his escape from slavery at age twenty, he adopted the name of the hero of Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake.Douglass immortalized his years as a slave in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave(1845). This and two subsequent autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), mark his greatest contributions to American culture. Written as antislavery propaganda and personal revelation, they are regarded as the finest examples of the slave narrative tradition and as classics of American autobiography.
Go Fred Project
John, Joe Don, Cindy Sue and LaKeisha
Email: bwight@mtvernonisd.com
Website: www.mtvernonisd.com
Location: Mt. Vernon HS
Phone: 903.777.1444
Frederick Douglass