The Legacy of Frederick Douglasss

1. The Legacy of Frederick Douglasss Karen Jacobs Morgan Road Middle School 3635 Hiers Blvd. Hephzibah, GA 30815

2. In the Beginning… Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland in February 1818. His mother Harriet Bailey was a slave; his father was probably Aaron Anthony, the general plantation superintendent for the Lloyd plantation, where Douglasss spent his early childhood.

3. Later on … • When Douglasss was eight, he was sent to Baltimore to live with and work for the Auld family. There he learned an important lesson about the relationship of reading and writing to freedom. Douglasss taught himself how to read and write with the help of his master’s wife and local white children.

4. As he grew older… • At the age of sixteen, in January 1834, he was hired out to Edward Covey, a notorious ”Negro Breaker.” Up to this point he had lived either as a house or urban slave. Now he became a field hand and for the first time in his life he was regularly whipped and his spirit almost broken.

5. Slavery years… • Later on, he worked for another master, the kindly William Freeland. Still, all Frederick wanted was his freedom. He started an illegal “school” for blacks in the area that secretly met at night and on Sundays. With five other slaves, he began to plan his escape to the free states.

6. ~Continued~ • They planned to steal a boat and row it to the northern tip of Chesapeake Bay. Their escape was supposed to take place before the Easter holiday of 1836, however, one of his associates exposed the plot and a group of armed white men captured the slaves and jailed them.

7. Following the North Star… • In his spare time, he met with a group of educated students and formed an educational association called the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. While being admitted he learned his debating skills. One of the meetings, he met a free black woman named Anna Murray. She was a plain and uneducated. He admired her qualities of thriftiness, industrious and religious. The fell in love and was married in 1838. They had five children. After the death of his first wife . He married his former secretary, Helen Pitts, a white woman from Rochester, NY.

8. Working towards his freedom… • Frederick tried to escape once more from Thomas Auld. Auld promised him if he worked hard he would be freed when he turned 25. However, escaping would be very difficult due to professional slave catchers patrolling the borders between slave states and free slaves, and free blacks traveling by train or steamboat had to carry official papers listing their names

9. ~Continued~ • name, age, height, skin color, and their distinguishing features. In order to escape, Frederick needed money to pay for his traveling.

10. From Slave to Abolitionist/Editor… • Douglass become involved in the abolitionist movement, regularly attending lectures in New Bedford. The American Anti-slavery Society, of which he was a member, had been formed in 1833. Most of the leaders in the society were white, and black abolitionist sometimes had a difficult time making their voices heard within the movement

11. ~Continued~ • He served as a preacher at the Zion Methodist Church. One of the many issues he became involved in was the battle against attempts by white southerners to force blacks to move to Liberia.

12. Important Dates to Remember… • 1847 Prints The North Star • 1848 Attends the women’s rights convention • 1850 Involved in the Underground Railroad • 1870 The 15th Amendment is adopted • 1874 Becomes President of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust, U.S. • 1877 U.S. Marshal

13. ~Continued~ • 1880 Recorder of Deeds for Washington, DC • 1895 Dies in Washington, DC