The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
WhoWas Frederick Douglass?
The National Park Service will celebrate Douglass’ 200th birthday with events at Cedar Hill in February.
Two hundred years ago, in Maryland, a baby was born to a female slave. When he died 77 years later, he was a famous American who had worked for equal rights for AfricanAmericans and women, who had been a newspaper writer and editor, and who had advised presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.
Early life
The little boy had a big name: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. His mother lived on a different plantation, and she died when he was just 7 years old. He never knew his father, who was white.
When Frederick was 8 years old, he was sent to Baltimore to work as a personal servant. He figured out that literacy, or knowing how to read and write, was the key to freedom. Most slave owners wouldn’t let their slaves learn to read. They thought learning would make slaves harder to control. But Frederick taught himself to read and write.
Frederick bought a book when he was 12, “The Columbian Orator.” It was a book of speeches and essays about people’s rights. It not only helped him learn to read and speak better, but it gave him ideas about freedom.
Escape to freedom
At the age of 20, Frederick disguised himself as a sailor and got on a train going north, to freedom. When he arrived in New York City, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass in order to escape slave catchers.
He married Anna Murray, a free black woman who had helped him escape, and they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. They had five children: three boys and two girls.
Douglass found work and started speaking at meetings of abolitionists, or people who want to stop slavery. He became famous, but he worried about being captured and re-enslaved.
For two years, he traveled in Europe, speaking and selling his first book, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” Abolitionists in the U.S. offered to buy his freedom, and he returned home.
Working for others
Douglass and his family moved to Rochester, New York, and he began working for women’s rights and helping with the Underground Railroad, a network of people helping slaves escape to freedom. He started his own newspaper, The North Star.
During the Civil War, Douglass recruited African-Americans to fight and met with Lincoln to encourage equal pay and treatment for them. After the war, Douglass supported amendments to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery and guaranteed voting rights for all men.
Public life
Frederick and Anna moved to Washington, D.C., in 1872, where he held many public offices, including U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia — a position he held under five presidents. He continued to speak and write in support of racial equality and women’s rights.
In 1882, Anna died suddenly. Two years later, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white woman whowas the daughter of abolitionists. Douglass was married to Helen for 11 years before his death in 1895. After his death, she worked to keep Cedar Hill as a memorial to him.