My name is Anna and I am going to talk about Frederick Douglass, an inspirational man who helped establish freedom in America.  Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was born in February 1818 to his mother, a slave, and his father, a white slave master whom he never knew.  His grandmother, Betsy Bailey, and her husband, Isaac Bailey, raised him in a cabin in Talbot County, Maryland.  His grandparents were both slaves, but they worked caring for slave children, including Douglass, while the other adult slaves worked.  He loved his grandmother very much.  And he was closer to her than to his mother.  Although he was born a slave, during his first six years, Douglass didn’t know what a slave was.  In 1824, his beloved grandmother left him on a plantation called Wye House to fend for himself as a slave.  Colonel Edward Lloyd lived there.  He was the former US Senator and Governor to Maryland, and owned hundreds of slaves.  Although Douglass worked on Lloyd’s plantation, he actually belonged to Lloyd’s assistant, Captain Anthony.  On the plantation Douglass made a friend, Daniel Lloyd, who was the Colonel’s son.  Daniel would often take him inside his father’s lavishly decorated home and allow him to participate in his private tutoring.  That is when he was first introduced to books and reading.  He developed a longing to live and belong in that world.  In 1826, Captain Anthony’s daughter Lucretia arranged for Douglass to move to Baltimore as the babysitter for Tommy, the son of her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld.  In Baltimore, Douglass had a real bed, better food and more nicer clothes.  Unaware of the rules against teaching enslaved to read, Sophia – the wife of his new master – taught Douglass to read using the Bible.  Later he learned to spell.  In 1833, Lucretia’s husband, Thomas Auld, Douglass’s rightful owner decided to take him back.  For the next five years, he had several masters, however, he thought he deserved to be free.  Unfortunately, his impudent ways often led to brutal whippings.  At age 18, Douglass was owned again by Hugh Auld.  He was more determined than ever to find freedom.  With the help of Hugh Auld, he worked as a ship caulker for whaling ships working alongside some free Black men who helped him plan his escape.  He also worked another job at night, probably as a domestic servant to earn enough money to pay Auld and also to put money away for himself.  However, one week he couldn’t pay Auld and Auld grew angry with him.  Douglass knew he needed to escape immediately, so on September 3, 1838 he dressed as a sea captain and carried seaman’s papers posing as a free Black.  With extra support from his fiancée, a free Black woman, Anna Murray, he left Baltimore and headed for Philadelphia.  Although Pennsylvania was a free state, there were many slave catchers in Philadelphia, so Douglass continued on to New York.  He sent for Anna to join him, and another runaway slave, who had become a priest married them.  Thereafter they moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts which was highly opposed to slavery.  When he arrived he changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass, as a protection against slave catchers.  It was surprisingly hard for him to find work in New Bedford.  He took the only jobs he could find, as some whites were still prejudiced against Blacks, free or not.  He worked shoveling coal, cutting wood, unloading ships and scrubbing cabins.  In 1838, Douglass and his wife bought a small house and started a family.  By 1849, they had five children together.  They were both very happy.  And, even though his job situation was bad, he made the most of it by speaking out against inequality and giving speeches for his church.  This attracted much attention.  A particularly well-known abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even wrote an article about Douglass in his favorite paper, The Liberator.  He was truly honored and even more inspired to speak out against slavery.  His gripping, moving speeches were a catalyst for Garrison’s recruiting him as a regular speaker for Garrison’s anti-slavery society.  He was paid an actual salary.  At that time, he was also writing a series of influential autobiographies that described life as a slave, however, in 1850 time started to change for Douglass and all Americans.  The north and south were having heated debates about slavery.  After no compromises were found, the union split.  This was not what Douglass wanted because it meant he was unable to help slaves in the south.  However, Garrison did not care about the ignorance of southern people.  As a result, Douglass stopped working for Garrison and started his own newspaper, The North Star, which was renamed Frederick Douglass’s Newspaper in 1851.  Also in 1851, he helped three Maryland slaves escape to Canada through the Underground Railroad.  Naturally, he also suffered much abuse from fighting for what was considered by many, the wrong side of a hot topic.  His home was burned down, and many nasty things were said about him.  But his hard work and powerful message impressed many, including President Lincoln.  In fact, on January 1st, 1863, it was Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves at last.  Finally, slavery was outlawed.  After countless years of tiresome, painful but progressive work by slaves and all of the people who believed in equality and wanted change.  Frederick Douglass gave voice to the enslaved and proudly contributed to winning their freedom.  However, he still had a good deal of time left in his successful already full life, which he spent well.  In 1872, Douglass moved to Washington DC.  He held a variety of government positions from 1887 until 1891.  He served as US Marshal for DC from 1877 until 1881 and as DC’s Recorder of Deeds.  He was also appointed US Minister to Haiti from 1889 to 1891.  In his later life, following Anna’s death in 1882, he married a feminist named Helen Pitts in 1884.  She encouraged him to continue fighting for women’s rights, which he had been since 1848 up until the very day he died.  Frederick Augustus Washington Douglass died on February 20, 1895 at age 77, a free man.  He will always be remembered throughout history for having shaped the way Americans think about slavery as a truly disturbing message that it sent about our views as a nation.  He truly was a brave, inspirational man.