Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland around 1818 and escaped in 1838. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement, known for his oratory and his sharp antislavery writing, and he is called the most important leader of the movement for African American civil rights in the nineteenth century. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845, is his own account of slavery and freedom. He later served as a diplomat and edited newspapers.