Fredrick Douglas

What does it mean to be free a people? Is it the right to citizenship, vote, or is it just equality? This term has been looked upon broadly many times back to the colonial times and even today. Fredrick Douglas insisted on many of these and more. To truly understand Douglas’s beliefs one must look at Douglas’s life to see what he has gone and to fully understand the reasoning of his beliefs and actions.

Douglas was born by the name of Fredrick Augustus Washington Bailey as a slave on a plantation. He was taken away to live with his grandmother; away from the cruelties and hardship of slavery. He spent his early years living free, not knowing his life was bond to servitude. When he became old enough he stripped from this life and to work at his master’s plantation. To Douglas being taken away from the fun of childhood directly into the chains of slavery must have been unbearable. He rarely saw his mother, because she worked at a plant...