Frederick Douglass Day marks the birthday of Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey). He was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.

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