ABSTRACT
Frederick Douglass, African American writer, abolitionist and political activist, was born a slave in Maryland in February 1818 and named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He was one of several children born to Harriet Bailey, who worked as a field slave for her owner Aaron Anthony. It was rumoured that Anthony was Frederick’s father. Frederick Douglass spent much of his early life with his grandmother and saw little of his mother before she died when he was seven years old. A year later he was separated from his grandmother and sent to live with the family of his owner’s daughter in Baltimore. It was here that he was first taught to read and write and to learn that this knowledge, forbidden to slaves, might provide the road to his freedom from slavery. Henceforth he found ways to teach himself, or to be taught by others, and by the age of thirteen was secretly reading about the abolitionists and sharing his skills with other Black children.
