Item Type: Person

Linked To

Event

World's Columbian Exposition (1893)

Image

of person

This work is free of known copyright restrictions {{PD-US}}.

This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under the United States copyright law, including all related and neighbouring rights. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Tools

Download Add to My Collection Contact us about this Citation for this item

Frederick Douglass

Details

First NameFrederickFamily NameDouglassOther NameFrederick Augustus Washington BaileyBiographyFrederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as an enslaved person in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers his life up to those dates.

President Harrison appointed Douglass as the United States's minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and Chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo in 1889, but Douglass resigned the commission in July 1891 when it became apparent that the American President was intent upon gaining permanent access to Haitian territory regardless of that country's desires. In 1892, Haiti made Douglass a co-commissioner of its pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.EventWorld's Columbian Exposition (1893)MenuPeople | World's Fair Attendees

Image

[Frederick Douglass] / C.F. Conly, Photographer, 465 Washington St., Boston. digital file from original, front

Source

Profile Picture URLLibrary of Congress: [Frederick Douglass] / C.F. Conly, Photographer, 465 Washington St., Boston.Metadata URLWikipedia: Frederick Douglass