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An escaped slave helped end slavery in America

IN February 1818, a boy named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born on a plantation in eastern Maryland. His mother was a slave, his father was a white man whose identity was never revealed by his mother, and has never been determined. Frederick was separated from his mother as an infant and never knew his father. He was raised by his relatives, who also were slaves. Born a slave, Frederick witnessed the brutality of slavery whippings, starvation, forced labor and human beings treated like disposable property.

When Frederick was eight years old, his owner sent him to live with the family of a ship builder named Hugh Auld. His life was pleasant in Baltimore and Aulds wife, Sofia, taught him how to read.

Teaching slaves to read was against the law and eventually Mr. Auld put a stop to it. But Frederick now had the tools to educate himself. He had also, in Baltimore, been exposed to the movement to abolish slavery in the US. Young Frederick began to think that there was hope for a different life for him and for all slaves.

When Frederick was a teenager he was sent back to the plantation, and from there to a brutal slave owner named Edward Covey. He was whipped, beaten and starved, and he vowed to escape.

In 1836, Frederick planned his first escape, but he was imprisoned when his plan was discovered. Two years later, back in Baltimore with the Auld family and working at a shipyard, he made a run for freedom again.

On Sept. 3, 1838, Frederick fled Baltimore by impersonating a sailor. He settled in New Bedford, Mass., with his new wife, Anna, and began to raise a family. To conceal his identity as a runaway slave, Frederick changed his name to Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass quickly became a leader in the abolitionist movement. He made his first public speech at just 23 years old before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Societys annual convention in 1841, impressing the audience with his speaking skills and intellect. The speech propelled him to prominence, and the abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison became his mentor. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, even though the publication put his freedom at risk.

He then embarked on a three-year European speaking tour where he was welcomed in England, Ireland and Scotland. Back home, he had enough money to officially purchase his freedom, and he published his own newspaper, the North Star.

Douglass became a famous civil rights leader, public speaker and writer, who championed womens rights as well as racial equality. He became an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln, counseling Lincoln to recruit slaves to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War, and to abolish slavery.

He was the first African American appointed to high-ranking posts within the government, including serving as the US marshal of the District of Columbia and consul-general to Haiti. He attended the first convention for womens rights in Seneca Falls, NY. He was the first African-American ever nominated for vice president, though he did not seek the nomination or campaign for the job.

After the death of his wife, he married a white woman, the feminist activist Helen Pitts, stirring up controversy. Yet, Douglass remained a powerful voice for equality and human rights.

He died in February, 1888, just hours after receiving a standing ovation for a speech on womens equality.

New York Post, February 14, 2011
Frederick Douglass Robin Wallace

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