The son of a black woman and a white man, Frederick Douglass had been born in about 1818 into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. After escaping his enslavement in 1838, he made extraordinary use of his freedom, employing his fierce willpower and surpassing eloquence to become one of America’s leading abolitionist editors and orators, as well as its most prominent African American man. With enormous courage, he held a mirror up to his country, going so far as to question its deep
