Happy Birthday, Frederick Douglass

Born February 14, 1818, Cordova, MD | Died February 20, 1895, Washington, DC

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates abolitionist, statesman, and author Frederick Douglass, on the 207th anniversary of his birth. After escaping slavery in 1838, Douglass became one of the most prolific antislavery orators, delivering his famous speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” in New York. He also wrote extensively about his experience of slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which greatly influenced the abolitionist movement.

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Frederick Douglass, circa 1840s, unknown photographer.

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Frederick Douglass, 1856, unknown photographer.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) quickly became a bestseller, and established Douglass as a major figure in the abolitionist movement. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) expands upon his first autobiography. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881; revised 1892) chronicles the remainder of his life.

First published nonfiction work:

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.

Select nonfiction bibliography:

• Frederick Douglass: Speeches and Writings, Library of America, 2022.

• Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies, Library of America, 1994.

See also:

Visit the Frederick Douglass Papers hosted by the Library of Congress.

Watch “Frederick Douglass: Literacy, Libraries and Liberation,” a conversation between Angela Davis and Toni Morrison on Douglass’s life and impact at the New York Public library, 2010.

Read Douglass’s essay “Reconstruction,” annotated by historian David Blight, in The Atlantic, 2023.

Read “Frederick Douglass Lived Another Fifty Years After Publishing His First Autobiography,” by Robert Levine in Humanities, 2017.

Read “Lectures on Liberation,” by Angela Davis, where she analyzes the work of Douglass for her class at UCLA, 1969.