Frederick Douglass

Born a slave, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey became a notorious American social reformer and abolitionist.

Douglass was of mixed race and he got separated from his mother early in his life. At the age of six he got charge to serve Hugh Auld in Baltimore. Hugh's wife took Douglass under her wing and started teaching him the alphabet. Later on, they decided that to educate slaves could be dangerous. They stopped all tutoring and Douglass start teaching himself, and continued to learn to read and write by observing the white men he was working for.

Douglass said, "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom." and this quote led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. Secretely, he started teaching other slaves on the plantation to read. 

Once married to a black free woman, he found his path to freedom and joined an independent black denomination church and started improving his oratorical skills and became a preacher. He started attending abolitionist meetings which lead to become a natural leader and a reformer.

In 1848, Douglass was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, in upstate New York.

His connection with NY kept strenghten. Douglass observed that New York's facilities and instruction for African-American children were vastly inferior to those for whites. Douglass called for court action to open all schools to all children. 

He died in Washington, DC but he was transported to the city that he lived for 25 years: Rochester, NY where he was laid to rest next to his wife grave in the Mount Hope Cemetery.