The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass - By Frederick Douglass
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/life-and-times-of-frederick-douglass-frederick-douglass/1100401155


Overview
Born in slavery on a Maryland plantation around 1817, Frederick Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life in bondage. Taught to read and write by one of his owners, he went on to become a brilliant writer, eloquent orator, and a major participant in the struggle of African-Americans for freedom and equality. In this remarkable firsthand narrative, originally published in 1845, Douglass vividly recounts his early years filled with physical abuse, deprivation, and tragedy; dramatic escapes to the North, recapture, and eventual freedom; work for the Anti-Slavery Society and influential role in speaking for other former slaves; abolitionist campaigns and crusade for civil rights. A powerful autobiography of a passionate integrationist, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass will be an important addition to the library of anyone interested in African-American history.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass


Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818[3] – February 20, 1895) 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[4] and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.[5][6] Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave.[7]

Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his experiences in slavery in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became influential in its support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free". Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Without his approval, he became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable and small Equal Rights Party ticket.[8] Douglass held multiple public offices.

Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant, famously quoted as saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."