Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, orator, writer and diplomat.

After escaping from slavery, he becomes a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.

He stands as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves do not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.

In fact, even many Northerners find it hard to believe that such a great orator could possibly have been a slave.

Douglass write sseveral autobiographies, eloquently describing his life as a slave, and his struggles to be free.

His first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, is published in 1845 and is his best-known work, influential in gaining support for abolition.

He writes two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War.

After the Civil War, Douglass remains very active in America's struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free".

Douglass actively supports women's suffrage.

Following the war, he works on behalf of equal rights for freedmen, and holds multiple public offices.