50 Fun Facts About Frederick Douglass

What was Frederick Douglass's surname at birth?

He was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and dropped the middle names before choosing a new surname in the North.

In which state was Douglass born into slavery?

He grew up in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14 because his mother called him what?

He never knew his exact birth date; historian Dickson Preston later fixed it as February 1818.

Who first began teaching the roughly 12-year-old Douglass the alphabet in Baltimore?

Her husband Hugh stopped the lessons, which Douglass called the first 'antislavery lecture' he ever heard.

Which classroom anthology did Douglass credit with defining his views on freedom and human rights?

First published in 1797, it was a reader of essays, speeches and dialogues that he found at about age 12.

Douglass fought and defeated which 'slave-breaker' at the age of 16?

'You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man,' he wrote of the fight.

What trade was Douglass hired out to learn in a Baltimore shipyard in 1835?

White workers who feared competition from slave labour abused him there.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass escaped Baltimore by what means?

He wore a sailor's uniform and carried a free seaman's papers; the whole journey took less than 24 hours.

Who provided the sailor's uniform and money that made Douglass's escape possible?

A free black woman about five years his senior, she married him in New York eleven days after he arrived.

Douglass's surname was suggested by a friend who had just read which poem by Walter Scott?

He had briefly used the names Stanley and Johnson, but Johnson was too common in his new town.

In which Massachusetts whaling town did the newly free Douglass and his wife first settle in 1838?

It was an abolitionist centre full of former enslaved people; they moved to Lynn in 1841.

Douglass became a licensed preacher in 1839 in which denomination?

The church also counted Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman among its members.

Which abolitionist paper did young Douglass rank 'second only to The Bible' in his heart?

Its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, became his mentor before a famous split.

Where did the 23-year-old Douglass give his first major anti-slavery speech in 1841?

He spoke at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's convention days after being unexpectedly asked to tell his story.

During the 1843 'Hundred Conventions' tour, a mob broke Douglass's hand in which Indiana town?

A Quaker family rescued him; the hand healed badly and troubled him for life.

What was the title of the 1845 bestseller that was his first autobiography?

Within a few years it was reprinted nine times and translated into French and Dutch.

How many autobiographies did Douglass publish in his lifetime?

The last, Life and Times, came out in 1881 and was revised in 1892.

Why did Douglass's friends urge him to tour Ireland and Britain after the Narrative was published?

He sailed on the Cambria in August 1845 and stayed abroad two years.

Which Irish nationalist did Douglass befriend and call a great inspiration during his 1845 visit?

Douglass arrived just as the Great Famine was beginning.

How did Douglass become legally free in 1846?

Anna Richardson and her sister-in-law Ellen of Newcastle upon Tyne led the effort.

Which musical instrument did Douglass take up during his British tour and play for the rest of his life?

His grandson Joseph Henry Douglass became a renowned concert violinist.

What was the name of the abolitionist newspaper Douglass founded in upstate New York in 1847?

It was printed in the basement of a church and paid for with £500 from English supporters.

Roughly how many fugitive slaves did Douglass and his wife shelter in their home?

Their upstate New York house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Douglass split with William Lloyd Garrison around 1847 over what question?

Garrison burned copies of the Constitution; Douglass came to see it as a weapon against slavery.

Douglass was the only black person to attend which 1848 gathering?

His speech helped pass Elizabeth Cady Stanton's resolution for women's suffrage.

Douglass gave his speech 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' in which city?

Delivered on July 5, 1852, one biographer called it 'perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given.'

Of which organisation, the first black labour union in the US, was Douglass elected vice president in 1850?

He had helped found it.

Where did Douglass secretly meet John Brown shortly before the Harpers Ferry raid?

After 'a day and a night' of talks he refused to join, judging the mission suicidal; he kept the meeting secret for 20 years.

Which document did John Brown write during a two-week stay at Douglass's home in 1859?

Brown visited two months before the raid; Douglass fled to Canada and then England after it failed.

Douglass is described as the most ___ American of the 19th century.

He never smiled for the camera, refusing to feed the caricature of the happy enslaved person.

What was the title of Douglass's 1863 broadside urging black men to enlist in the Union army?

His sons Charles and Lewis joined the 54th Massachusetts, and Lewis fought at Fort Wagner.

Which regiment did two of Douglass's sons join during the Civil War?

It was led by Robert Gould Shaw and later portrayed in the film Glory.

Which candidate did Douglass support in the 1864 presidential election?

He was disappointed that Lincoln would not publicly endorse the vote for black freedmen.

Delivering the keynote at the Emancipation Memorial in 1876, Douglass called Lincoln what?

He also said Lincoln 'in his heart of hearts loathed and hated slavery'; Mary Lincoln reportedly gave him Lincoln's favourite walking stick.

In 1872 Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president, on which ticket?

He was nominated without his knowledge and never acknowledged it.

Douglass named the three 'boxes' in which a man's rights rest as the ballot box, the jury box and what?

He said it in an 1867 speech, adding that no woman should be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.

Which financial institution did Douglass become president of in 1874, only for it to fail within months?

His last newspaper, the New National Era, collapsed in the same economic crisis.

Which president appointed Douglass US Marshal for the District of Columbia in 1877?

He was the first person of colour in the post; he was later Recorder of Deeds for the District.

Whom did Douglass visit on his deathbed in 1877 and reconcile with?

Auld's daughter had earlier sought Douglass out and cheered one of his speeches.

What did Douglass name his final home, on high ground above the Anacostia River in Washington?

He expanded it from 14 to 21 rooms; it is now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

Douglass's second wife, Helen Pitts, caused controversy because she was what?

He replied that his first marriage was to someone the colour of his mother, his second to someone the colour of his father.

To which country did President Harrison appoint Douglass as US minister resident in 1889?

He resigned in 1891 when Harrison pushed for permanent access to Haitian territory; Haiti later made him a commissioner of its Chicago World's Fair pavilion.

At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African American to do what?

Sixteen years earlier he had been nominated for vice president without his knowledge.

What was Douglass's advice, a month before his death, to a young Black man starting out?

He had made a career, one historian wrote, of 'agitating the American conscience'.

Douglass died in 1895 shortly after a standing ovation at a meeting of which organisation?

He suffered a heart attack at home later that day, aged 76 or 77.

Where is Douglass buried, next to his first wife Anna?

His grave there is, along with Susan B. Anthony's, the most visited on the grounds.

A statue unveiled in his adopted home city in 1899 made Douglass the first African American to be what?

Europe's first statue of him was unveiled in Belfast in 2023.

How many children did Douglass and his first wife Anna Murray have?

Charles and Rosetta helped produce his newspapers; the youngest, Annie, died at the age of ten.

What keepsake did the late president's widow supposedly give Douglass after his 1876 memorial speech?

The keepsake still rests at Cedar Hill, his final home in Washington, now a National Historic Site.

What happened to Douglass's third Rochester home around midnight on June 2, 1872?

Sixteen volumes of the North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper were lost, and he moved to Washington, D.C.