February 14, 2018

World Book continues its celebration of Black History Month with a look at noted United States abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The date of Douglass’s birth is not known for sure, but most historians think he was born in February 1818. Douglass himself chose February 14—200 years ago today—to mark his birth. Douglass was the leading spokesman of African Americans in the 1800′s. Born a slave, he became a noted reformer, author, and orator. Douglass devoted his life to the abolition of slavery and the fight for African American rights.

Frederick Douglass was one of the leading fighters for African American rights during the 1800′s. Douglass escaped from slavery as a young man and became an important writer and orator for the abolitionist movement. Credit: National Archives

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland. At the age of 8, he was sent across the Chesapeake Bay to work in Baltimore, where he began to educate himself. He later worked in a shipyard, where he caulked ships, making them watertight.

In 1838, the young man escaped slavery—a dangerous act that could meet with terrible punishment if he was caught—to the free state of Massachusetts. To help avoid capture by fugitive slave hunters, he changed his last name to Douglass. He got a job as a caulker, but many workers refused to work with him because he was black. To make a meager living, Douglass held unskilled jobs, among them collecting rubbish and digging cellars.

In 1841, Douglass delivered a speech on freedom at a meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. The society was so impressed with his speech that it hired Douglass to lecture about his experiences as a slave. In the early 1840′s, Douglass protested against segregated seating on trains by sitting in cars reserved for whites. (More than 100 years later, Rosa Parks and other civil rights activists were still protesting similar segregation in the American South.) Douglass also protested racial discrimination in churches where blacks were not allowed to take part in “whites only” services.

In 1845, Douglass published an autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He feared that his identity as a runaway slave would be revealed when the book was published, so he went to the United Kingdom, where slavery had been abolished in 1833. There, Douglass continued to speak against American slavery. He also found friends who raised money to officially buy his freedom.

Douglass returned to the United States in 1847 and founded an antislavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. In the 1850′s, Douglass railed against discrimination in the workplace, and he led a successful campaign against segregated schools in Rochester. His New York home was a station on the underground railroad, a system that helped runaway slaves reach freedom.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Douglass helped recruit African Americans for the Union Army. He discussed the problems of slavery with President Abraham Lincoln several times. Douglass served as recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia from 1881 to 1886 and as U.S. minister to Haiti from 1889 to 1891. He wrote two expanded versions of his autobiography— My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). He died on Feb. 20, 1895.