Frederick Douglass Informative Essay

Frederick Douglass, who was named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was born into slavery, but would become one of the greatest civil rights activists in American history. He was the son of a slave named Harriet Bailey and a caucasian man who he never knew. He was born in February of 1817 in Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass was one of the most important abolitionist in the United States. After he escaped slavery, he wrote an autobiography titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. His writings showed people what slavery was like, so they could understand why it needed to abolished. He spent his lifetime writing and speaking against slavery and for the rights of African Americans, challenging his audience on what freedom really means. When Douglass died on February 20, 1895, the reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, paid tribute to him by writing in her diary that when he spoke “He stood there like an African prince, majestic in his wrath. Around him sat the great antislavery orators of the day, earnestly watching the effect of his eloquence on that immense audience, that laughed and wept by turns, completely carried away by …show more content…
Born into slavery. Frederick spent his formative years living “with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven” (PBS). At the age of eight, Douglass was sent to Baltimore, Maryland to work for the family of Hugh Auld. It was at this time when Douglass learned to read and write. While learning these valuable skills, Frederick was first exposed to the term “abolition” and “abolitionists”. This proved to be incredibly influential in the years that would follow for Frederick Douglass. Frederick would later reflect on his time in Baltimore with fondness and note that this was the place that laid the framework for his