Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglasswas an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a...
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth14 February 1818
CityTalbot County, MD
It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.
Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.
I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.
The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.
Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.
Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
What to the Slave is the 4th of July.