Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist, writer and orator, 1818–1895. 1 explained quote.
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About Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland, taught himself to read, and escaped to freedom in 1838. He became the most famous Black American of the nineteenth century: an abolitionist speaker, the author of three autobiographies, the editor of his own newspaper and later a government official and diplomat.
Douglass was one of the great orators of his age, and he was also one of the most photographed Americans of his century, sitting for portraits deliberately to show a dignified image of a Black man. His speeches were often printed in full in newspapers and pamphlets, so his words can usually be checked against texts published at the time.
More lines by Douglass
Short quotes checked against their sources.
- “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” speech, Rochester, New York, 1852