Frederick douglass history channel

Frederick Douglass sits in the pantheon of Black history figures. Born into slavery, he made a daring escape North, wrote best-selling autobiographies and went on to become one of the nation’s most powerful voices against human bondage.

He stands as the most influential civil and human rights advocate of the 19th century.

Perhaps his greatest legacy? He never shied away from hard truths.

Because even as he wowed 19th-century audiences in the U.S.

and England with his soaring eloquence and patrician demeanor, even as he riveted readers with his published autobiographies, Douglass kept them focused on the horrors he and millions of others endured as enslaved Americans: the relentless indignities, the physical violence, the families ripped apart.

And he blasted the hypocrisy of a slave-holding nation touting liberty and justice for all.

He wanted to rouse the nation's conscience—and expose its hypocrisy

Douglass’s voluminous writings and speeches&n