Born to Harriet Bailey, an enslaved woman in Maryland in February 1818, Douglass lived twenty years as a slave and nearly nine years as a fugitive. From the 1840s to his death in 1895, he attained international fame as an abolitionist, reformer, orator of almost unparalleled stature, and author of three classic autobiographies.

African American Voting Rights from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo.

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