Frederick Douglass constantly reinvented and strengthened himself after his escape from slavery in 1838. Self-taught and widely read, Douglass began his abolitionist work at an 1841 convention, led by William Lloyd Garrison, in Massachusetts. He was soon lecturing brilliantly from a hundred podiums each year. Douglass refused, however, to be cast as a grateful, courageous fugitive. In his lectures and his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Douglass told his unforgettable story and condemned southern slavery and northern inequality.

Like James McCune Smith, Douglass broke with Garrison to advocate political action and even violence as a way to attack the slave system. Based in Rochester after 1847, Douglass published weekly and monthly newspapers that unwaveringly denounced compromise with pro-slavery politicians. His second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), included an introduction by his good friend James McCune Smith.

To hear an imagined conversation based on a chance meeting between Frederick Douglass and fugitive slave William Dixon, click on the audio icon.