Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave, played a central role in the pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement.

Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818 on a farm in Maryland, he displayed intelligence that led to some rudimentary education in reading and spelling before his master forbade it. In 1838 at the age of 20, he escaped from the Baltimore area disguised in sailor's clothes and went to New York. He married Anna Murray, a free black woman, and they moved to New Bedford, Mass.

He changed his name to Douglass and worked as a laborer. He had a talent for public speaking and began preaching in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Douglass became an eloquent and charismatic speaker, able to hold audiences spellbound while he related horrifying details of conditions on the farm where he was raised. In 1841, he became a salaried lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, traveling New England and the Midwest.

Douglass advocated a nonviolent campaign against slavery. In 1845, he published "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave."

He went to Britain primarily to escape recapture, but he also made an extended speaking tour. English friends purchased his freedom in 1846. Following his return, he published more papers and books. He opposed John Brown's plan for arming a guerrilla force to free slaves, supported Lincoln for the presidency and petitioned Lincoln to allow black soldiers into the Union Army.

In the post-Civil War period, he served as a recorder of deeds, a U.S. marshal for Washington, D.C., and minister to Haiti, but he continued to speak out for the plight of his people in Southern Reconstruction policies, suffrage and civil rights. He owned and edited a weekly Washington newspaper called the New National Era. He died in 1895.

-- By Dr. E. Kenneth Vey, History Center Library & Archives volunteer

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