February 1818 – February 20, 1895

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Who is Frederick Douglass?• Early Life• Middle Years• Later Years

Important Dates Slavery Civil War Quotes Clothing and Food Music Vocabulary

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The most important thing about Frederick Douglass is he worked for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality.He believed in civil rights and freedom for African-Americans.

Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Which state is to the north of Maryland?

These pictures show slave cabins. Douglass was born in a cabin much like these.

Slavery meant that someone owned another person. When Frederick Douglass was born, the man who owned the farm, called a plantation, owned the African American people that were born there.

Being a slave meant you had no freedoms. You had to do exactly what your master, the person who owned you, told you to do.

He was raised by his grandparents because his mother worked in the fields and rarely saw him. His mother died when he was 7.

When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with relatives of his master. His new mistress taught him the alphabet. When her husband forbade her to continue her instruction, because it was unlawful to teach slaves how to read, Frederick learned to read and write on his own. He made the neighborhood boys his teachers, by giving away his food in exchange for lessons in reading and writing.

How would you feel if you had no family and you were sent to live with someone you didn’t know?

Forbade/forbid means to not let someone do something. Why was Frederick Douglass forbidden to learn to read?

Why do you think it was unlawful, or against the law, to teach a slave to read?

When his master died in Baltimore, Douglass was returned to the plantation to work on the farm. He was 15.

He dreamed of freedom and knew that reading and writing were important to be able to persuade people that slavery was wrong.

In 1838, at the age of twenty, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery by pretending to be a sailor.

He went to New York City and later moved to the state of Massachusetts.

Douglass began to give persuasive speeches against slavery. A person who is against slavery is called an abolitionist.

He was a good public speaker and people came to hear him speak against slavery.

He traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to England as well as traveling to many places in the Northern United States. He told about his life as a slave. Thousands of people came to see him and hear his words.

This paper shows an advertisement for an anti-slavery rally. This is where people who gave speeches would go and other people would listen to them.

He started a newspaper called the North Star, in Rochester, New York. The newspaper was named after the north star in the sky that many runaway slaves used to guide them to freedom.

HudsonRiver

When Frederick Douglass started a newspaper, he used an example of the right of freedom of expression. This freedom to be able to speak out either for or against something is a freedom given to citizens of the United States by the United States Constitution.

The war ended 4 years later, in 1865. Thousands of men had died in the war.

After the war ended in 1865, a new law was passed that ended slavery.

Douglas was thrilled to have slavery ended at last. Unfortunately, the end of slavery did not mean that African Americans were treated fairly. They were not treated fairly.

Douglass continued to write and travel and speak out for fair treatment, equal rights, and justice for African Americans. He also believed that women should be able to vote, because during his lifetime, women could NOT vote.

In 1872 he moved to Washington DC, the capitol of the United States, after his house burned down in Rochester, New York.

This house is now a National Historic Site

www.nps.gov/frdo/freddoug.html

Frederick Douglass

1818 Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a slave, in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland.

1838 Escapes Slavery to New York and changes his last name to Johnson.

1845 Publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In it, he reveals details that could lead to his arrest as a fugitive slave.

1847 With money raised by English and Irish friends, buys printing press and begins publishing the abolitionist weekly North Star. He continues publishing it until 1851.

1855 Publication of his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.

1872 The Equal Rights Party nominates Douglass for vice-president of the United States on a ticket headed by Victoria C. Woodhull.

Slavery has been around for thousands of years.

It began in the Colonies of American when people who owned large farms, called plantations, needed people to work on the farms.

People who owned ships went to Africa and bought slaves from the African people. They put the slaves back on the ship and sailed to the Colonies where they were sold.

This map shows how slaves were taken from Africa and shipped to many different parts of the world.

Some slave owners were kind, but many were cruel.

Most slaves were people who were considered "colored." White people saw themselves as being superior African American people. Some slaves were treated terribly. They would sleep outdoors or in small, crowded slave cabins. Some house slaves were treated better. They worked hard and for long hours or else got beaten, and they received no money at all.

This picture was taken in 1861 on a plantation in Virginia.

Explain how these population figures affected each region’s stand on the slavery debate issue.

In 1861 the Northern States in America went to war with the Southern States. This war was called the Civil War.

The President at that time was Abraham Lincoln.

Frederick Douglass spoke with President Lincoln and asked Lincoln to help free the slaves.

Both Douglas and Lincoln wanted the slaves to be free.

“I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.”

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”

CLOTHING FOOD Cotton Shirts Wool and Cotton Pants Wool Jacket Wool Hat Stockings Large Leather Shoes

Cornmeal Salt Pork or Bacon Watermelon Wild Game Trout Occasionally Fruits and

Vegetables Grits Corn

Wade in the Water Shortenin' Bread Bile Them Cabbage Down Rosey Soliders’ Joy Run Old Jeremiah Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round Certainly Lord Freedom Hold On Follow the Drinking Gourd I'm Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table

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Abolitionist Freedom Slave/slavery Master Plantation Racial equality Civil rights Succeed

Civil war Abraham Lincoln Justice Equal rights Constitution Forbid Persuade Pretend

*Vocabulary are highlighted in red throughout the power point.