4 Reasons Why Frederick Douglass is a Big Deal!
You might wonder why we chose to create an annual global event around Frederick Douglass himself. Why is he so central to our project? In short, it's because he was not only an abolitionist but also an educator, an activist, an agitator and, in modern terms, an anti-racist. Here are just 4 of the reasons why we think Frederick Douglass is such an important human being and a powerful symbol for justice around the world.
Frederick Douglass not only taught himself how to read and write, he taught many other enslaved people how to do so, often holding lessons attended by as many as 40 people. Because literate enslaved men, women and children were a threat to the power of slave owners, these lessons were often broken up and enslaved people were often punished if they were found reading or writing.
Despite the risk of being recaptured, Frederick Douglass was an active speaker for abolitionism, once employed by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society where he travelled throughout many Northern states speaking about the horrors of slavery and the dream of equality. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act, where Northern states were required to return escaped enslaved man, women and children, Douglass had to move overseas to secure his safety and freedom. While abroad, he continued to speak out against slavery throughout England and Ireland.
Frederick Douglass was the only African-American to attend the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848. He wrote of the movement, “In respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man,” and in fact, later in 1866, helped found the American Equal Rights Association with Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others.
Frederick Douglass believed in and fought for complete societal integration, which, he hoped, would lead to the end of race and the creation of a new American identity. In essence, he fought for the end of racial injustice and the end of the social construct of race as an identifier and a way to separate human beings.