Side Note to Lecture 14
Frederick Douglass
Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass lived for twenty years as the property of white plantation owners. Although Southern slave owners did everything in their power to keep slaves uneducated and therefore unempowered, somehow Douglass managed to learn to read and write as a young boy. After a daring escape from bondage in 1838, Douglass immortalized his years as a slave in his autobiographical slave narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Along with two other autobiographical accounts, Douglass' work represents some of the finest examples of the American slave narrative tradition. After gaining fame as an author, Douglass became a highly influential reformer, speaking for abolition as early as the 1840s and denouncing Jim Crow and lynching as late as the 1890s. Douglass gained great fame in the United States and abroad for his ability as an speaker and writer, and his thousands of speeches and editorials denouncing slavery and oppression provided great hope for his people. In the 1850s Douglass put his oratory skills to work for the cause of another oppressed people by openly supporting and encouraging the early women's rights movement.
Return to Lecture 14: Women, Feminism, and Sex in Progressive America