Institute for American Thought Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis

The most famous African American opponent of slavery, Frederick Douglass's career spanned nearly the entire nineteenth century and touched on issues of race and gender that resonated a century beyond his death.  He first burst onto the abolitionist scene with his thrilling oration at antislavery meetings. 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. He 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.

At this point, Frederick Douglass tends to fade from the standard narrative of history. Yet, his career continued and he continued to struggle for African-American equality.  He held various positions in the federal government, including assistant secretary to Santo Domingo, president of Freedmen's Bank, and U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia. From 1889 to 1891, Douglass served as the first U.S. minister to Haiti, and received criticism for having too much sympathy for the Haitians. He resigned over American designs to colonize the nation. Throughout this period, he maintained an active speaking schedule. His meeting with Ida B. Wells-Barnett reawakened him to the continued violence and oppression being perpetrated upon black people in the south, and motivated him to join her in her anti-lynching campaign and write his final speech "The Lessons of the Hour."

Douglass had also participated in the movement for women's equality from its beginnings at the Seneca Falls meeting in 1848. The slogan for his second newspaper was "All rights for all," and women's rights advocates numbered among his close friends. Although he had parted ways with many of them over the exclusion of women from the fifteenth amendment, he continued to advocate women's suffrage and equality literally until his dying day. After attending a women's rights rally in Washington, D.C. on February 20, 1895, Douglass returned home to his house in Anacostia where he died.