| FREDERICK AUGUSTUS WASHINGTON
BAILEY changed his name to Frederick Douglass
after he escaped slavery in 1838. He stayed with a white family named Bailey
in New Bedford, Massachusetts and did not want to cause them difficulty
by having the same name. He was born in Talbot County, Maryland and went
to Baltimore, where he taught at the Fortie school in the early 1830's.
He later became closely aligned with abolitionists such as William Lloyd
Garrison and John Brown and was such an eloquent speaker that his opponents
doubted whether he had really been born a slave. His Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass is considered a literary masterpiece. He
died in Washington, D.C. in 1895. Source:
Summarized from Microsoft Encarta. |
