Social Studies

Hello people and welcome to my blog. I will be talking about Fredrick Douglas.

Douglass's main goal was to fight for Emancipation for slaves. He felt that African Americans had the right to fight for their freedom. Douglass spoke about how slavery was wrong and inhumane. He wrote about this in his newspaper and gave many speeches. On December 31, 1862 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln freed the slaves of the Confederacy and the North was no longer obligated to return any escaped slaves to the South. Lincoln and Douglass later worked together to move liberated slaves out of the South.

When Douglas was 12 years old his owner's wife broke the law by teaching him some of the letters in the alphabet. Douglass later learned how to read and write by the white children in his neighborhood and some of the people that he worked with. He began to read newspapers and political articles and books. Douglass started to become frustrated with his situation as a slave and decided to dedicate his life to abolishing slavery. In 1845 he published his Narative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

When Douglass returned home on February 20, 1895 from a meeting in Washington D.C. he died of a massive heart attack. He was buried at Mount Hope Cemetary in Rochester, NY. In 1921 the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity made Douglass a honorary member of the fraternity.

Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in the year of 1818. His exact birth date is unknown. He was born into slavery and it is believed that his father was a white man and might have been his owner. Douglass was separated from his mother at the age of six and went to live with his grandmother.

In 1836 Douglass made his first attemt to escape but was unsuccessful. On September 3, 1838 he was successful and escaped from his slave owners. He made his way to Maryland dressed in a sailor's uniform. From there he went to Delaware and then traveled to Pennsylvania. He finally ended up in New York and his freedom was secured when British sympathizers paid his slave owners for his freedom.