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Frederick Douglass' real name is Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He had to change it to avoid capture after he ran away from his second master. The wife of his second master helped him educate himself. Douglass fled to Massachusetts where he was employed, but white men refused to work with him because he was black. In 1841, he gave a speech about what freedom meant to him at the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. The audience loved him, and teh Society hired him to lecture about his slavery experiences. He protested against segregated on trains and religious discrimination. In 1845, Douglass published his biography, but he fled to England to avoid persecution for being a runaway slave. He continued to speak against slavery in England. His friends bought his freedom, and he returned to the United States in 1847. Upon his return, he founded a newspaper called the North Star. He charged that employers hired white immigrants over black Americans and led a sucessful attack against segregated schools in Rochester. He lived in a station on the Underground Railroad and helped recruit blacks for the union Army. He also discussed the problems of slavery with President Lincoln. Douglass was the Recorder of Deeds in teh District of Columbia from 1881 to 1886 and the United States Minister to Haiti from 1889 to 1891. He wrote two expanded versions of his autobiography: My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
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