He founded the North Star newspaper, attacking slavery in the south and racism in the north, and supported women’s suffrage at Seneca Falls in 1848. “We have opened our papers,” he wrote, “new and damp from the press.”Įarly efforts included a visit to Britain in which Douglass experienced the exhilaration of avoiding race prejudice for the first time.
Three autobiographies and countless pamphlets and editorials show a language both lyrical and beautiful. Once he began telling his story in public, Douglass brought the brutal inhumanity of slavery to northern audiences and launched his true life’s work. His travail under Covey’s yoke became Douglass’ crucifixion and resurrection.”
In 1838 he escaped north, making a new life and taking a new surname, adapted from Sir Walter Scott.Īs David Blight writes, “Douglass’ great gift … is that he found ways to convert the scars Covey left on his body into words that might change the world. He worked in Baltimore, was converted as a teenager to a strong personal faith, and taught himself oratory from sermons and books. He was taught to read (then a crime) by a white woman, Sophia Auld, in the family that enslaved him. His second wife, Helen, wrote of “the shining angel of truth by whose side I believe he was born, and by his side he unflinchingly walked through his life”. But he was born a slave, in Maryland in 1818, and he escaped to freedom and a life of voice and pen, thundering against slavery and for justice and the rights of African Americans and women – while becoming all those other things as well.
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