Death of Frederick Douglass, 1895

On 20 February 1895, Black abolitionist and advocate for women's rights who escaped slavery, Frederick Douglass, died in Washington DC, aged 77.

Douglass wrote his first autobiography in 1845, in which he named his former enslaver, and so he headed to Britain and Ireland, in part to avoid his former enslaver trying to reclaim his "property". There he spent two years raising the international profile of the movement to abolish slavery.

Douglass then returned to the US and set up a newspaper, The North Star, and after the civil war fought for the rights of the poor, Black people, Chinese migrants, Native Americans, and women.

For example, in 1888, Douglass delivered a speech to the International Council of Women, in which he stated:

"Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain-this new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman’s right to equal liberty with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom, law or usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power can withstand."

Frederick Douglass dies - WCH | Stories

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