Escaped enslaved person, abolitionist, orator, journalist, and statesman who became the most prominent Black American public figure of the nineteenth century — and whose life and writings remain foundational documents of American democracy's promise and betrayal.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, taught himself to read in secret, escaped, and became the most powerful orator in America. He then spent sixty years forcing the country to confront the gap between what it claimed to be and what it was — a task that has not yet been completed.