Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was an eloquent speaker, a tireless campaigner against slavery, and a champion of civil rights for women and for persons of African descent. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass was taught to read and write in violation of a Maryland state law prohibiting the education of African Americans. After escaping to Massachusetts in 1838, he associated with such prominent abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, J. G. Birney, and John Brown, and he became an influential force in the fight to end slavery.

In 1845, Douglass published the first of three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in which he told of his childhood, his youth, and his escape to freedom. After traveling in Britain and Ireland, where he lectured for the abolitionist cause, Douglass returned to America. Friends helped him to buy his freedom, and he moved to Rochester, New York, where he began publishing an abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, later called Frederick Douglass's Weekly and Frederick Douglass's Monthly. In 1855, he published an expanded, updated version of his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, which was followed in 1881 by a final autobiographical volume, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

Unjustly implicated in John Brown's attack on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, which Brown had hoped would instigate a slave revolt, Douglass fled to Canada and England before the Civil War. During the war, he returned to the United States where he helped to organize regiments of African-American soldiers to fight for the Northern cause, and he personally called on Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, to secure fair compensation for those soldiers. He also worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. After the war, Douglass held a number of political offices, including United States marshall and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, minister to Haiti, and chargé d'affaires to Santo Domingo. He also continued his political activities, lobbying for legislation to prevent discrimination of all kinds.