Frederick Douglass And The Abolition Movement

I, Frederick Douglass, a former slave and eminent human rights leader in the abolition movement, was the first black citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank. I was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. I ended becoming a famous intellectual and got involved in a large range of causes lecturing thousands about women’s rights, and the abolition movement to name a few. I wasn’t born Frederick Douglass, rather my birth name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I was one of the first African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, but more than that I wanted to help shape the United States as to where race and color did not matter, where everyone can live together without arguments over issues like these.

My mother was Harriet Bailey, and I do not recall who my father was, but I suspect he was a white man, and not just any white man but rumors spread that my master was my father. I didn’t really know my mother, it was custom practice to separate infants from their mothers before the twelfth month, and instead I was raised by an older woman who was too old to work in the fields. My mother finally died when I was seven, and at age eight I was sold to Baltimore to work for Hugh Auld. It was here that I learned about the abolition movement and to read and write. Auld’s wife taught me how to read and write while struggling to read the Bible, although Auld resented it and it angered him he didn’t do much to stop it. School children also traded their homework with me which increased by love for knowledge. I started to read newspapers avidly and it was The Columbian Orator that clarified and set my views for human rights. From that point I knew I had to make a difference one step at a