Frederick Douglass (1817–95,) born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was an American abolitionist and writer. An escaped slave, he rose through the brutalities of slavery to become the most important African American leader, intellectual, and orator of the nineteenth century. His autobiographical narrative remains one of the foremost documents in America’s literary and political history.
Born into slavery on a farm in Maryland, Douglass lived for twenty years as a slave. He escaped from slavery in 1838 and lived as a fugitive for nine years. He joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and established the anti-slavery newspaper North Star.
Douglass gained renown for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845,) his autobiographical account of his upbringing in slavery and his escape. The haunting descriptions of the beatings that Douglas suffered and the unrelenting humiliations that he endured remain to this day the most unforgettable and eloquent accounts of the crime of slavery.
Douglass became a leading activist in the struggle for abolition and black civil rights. He was an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln and lived to see the emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.
Douglass also wrote My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881.)
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For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
—Frederick Douglass
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
—Frederick Douglass
I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class
—Frederick Douglass
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
—Frederick Douglass
Topics: The Past, Reflection, Past
I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
—Frederick Douglass
I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored mans cause than those of the Democratic party.
—Frederick Douglass
He who would be free must strike the first blow.
—Frederick Douglass
Topics: Defense
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
—Frederick Douglass
Topics: Self-respect
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
—Frederick Douglass
Topics: Freedom
I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored mans political hopes and the ark of his safety.
—Frederick Douglass
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
—Frederick Douglass
Topics: Courage
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