"I will unite with any one to do right, and with no one to do wrong!"

The most famous African American opponent of slavery, Frederick Douglass's career spanned nearly the entire nineteenth century. He lectured on issues of race and gender with a power that resonated a century beyond his death. He began his speaking career with the Garrisonian abolitionists, narrating his experiences as a slave. The popularity of his speaking led to the publication of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the first of his three autobiographies, in which he told the harrowing tale of his childhood as a slave, for the first time revealing names and locations. His meeting with Ida B. Wells-Barnett convinced him to support the movement for women's equality from its beginnings at the Seneca Falls meeting in 1848, although he eventually parted ways with many supporters of woman suffrage due to the exclusion of women from the fifteenth amendment. Douglass twice toured England and published a series of newspapers to support the antislavery cause, gradually shifting his tactics from the non-political and non-violent methods of the abolitionists centered around William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, Massachusetts, to support of the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln and active recruitment of African American soldiers for the Union Army, including two of his own sons, during the Civil War.

After Emancipation, and the subsequent disbandment of abolition societies, Douglass's public role changed dramatically. He continued to struggle for African American equality, but within established channels rather than outside them. He held various positions in the federal government, including Minister-Resident and Consul-General to Haiti from 1889 to 1891, having already served as president of Freedmen's Bank, and U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. Throughout the latter period of his life, he maintained an active speaking schedule, continuing to advocate woman suffrage and equality until his dying day. After speaking at a women's rights rally in Washington, D.C., on 20 February 1895, Douglass returned to his house in Anacostia where, while recounting his morning's events to his wife, Helen Pitts, he died.

Biography courtesy of:

The Frederick Douglass Papers Project at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis

Timeline of Frederick Douglass's Life from the Library of Congress