Answer: Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 along the Eastern Shore of Maryland. During his childhood, the wife of one of his owners taught Douglass the alphabet. Later, she was forbidden to continue because slave literacy was illegal in Maryland. Undeterred, young Douglass taught himself, recognizing that education could be “the pathway from slavery to freedom.”
Experiencing the cruelty and moral injustices of the institution of slavery, Frederick Douglass successfully fled to the North in 1838 at age twenty by posing as a free black sailor and traveling via the Underground Railroad. Over the next six decades, he worked tirelessly to advocate for enslaved and free African Americans, rising to prominence in the United States government and throughout the entire country.
Upon arrival in New York City in 1838, Douglass was officially a free man, but he was also aware that there was much to be done to free those still in bondage. Douglass relocated to Massachusetts where he attended antislavery meetings and read abolitionist literature. In 1841, Douglass met William Lloyd Garrison, a famous abolitionist and editor of The Liberator, and began working for the cause as an orator—telling his story throughout New England and encouraging the end of slavery.
After moving to Rochester, New York, in 1843, he and his wife Anna Murray-Douglass began facilitating the movement of enslaved fugitives to Canada via the Underground Railroad.
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