Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: A Biography (1899) is a book by African American author, lawyer, and political activist Charles Chesnutt. While he is more widely known for “The Goophered Grapevine,” the first story published in The Atlantic by an African American author, Chesnutt was also a gifted biographer whose storytelling ability allowed him to present the life of such a man as Frederick Douglass in a fresh and revelatory light. “From this night of slavery Douglass emerged, passed through the limbo of prejudice which he encountered as a freeman, and took his place in history.” Born in Maryland, Douglass escaped slavery at the age of twenty with the help of his future wife Anna Murray Douglass, a free black woman from Baltimore. In New England, he connected with the influential abolitionist community and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a historically Black denomination which counted Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman among its members. In 1839, Douglass became a preacher and began his career as a captivating orator on religious, social, and political matters. He met William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, in 1841, and was deeply moved by his passionate abolitionism. As Douglass’ reputation and influence grew, he traveled across the country and eventually to Ireland and Great Britain to advocate on behalf of the American abolitionist movement, winning countless people over to the leading moral cause of the nineteenth century. Arguably one of the most influential Americans of all time, Douglass led a life dedicated to democracy and racial equality. This edition of Charles Chesnutt’s Frederick Douglass: A Biography is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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