Frederick
Douglass is the most famous African-American of the 19th Century. After escaping
from slavery, he became one of the nation's leading abolitionists who advocated
for abolishing slavery. He was a brilliant speaker and was asked by the American
Anti Slavery Society to travel on a lecture tour to speak for freedom. He was
quickly hailed as one of the first great African-American speakers and when his
autobiography was published in 1845, his fame spread around the world. During
the Civil War, Frederick Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln
and he was a powerful and influential voice for the adoption of Constitutional
Amendments that guaranteed African Americans voting rights and other civil liberties.
After the war, Frederick Douglass thought about buying a farm and retiring, but
he saw that even though slavery was abolished in America, there was still a lot
of racial injustice. He spent the rest of his life working for freedom, justice
and equality for all.
