Fredrick Douglas spent his early years in a home broken, beyond most people’s comprehension. His mother, a slave was forced to leave him as an infant. He never knew the identity of his father. He lived in poverty, crowded into to two rooms with grandparents and cousins. Beyond that, Fredrick was a slave- listed on an inventory along with mules and bushels of wheat. His owner could sell him on a whim because, then in America, Slavery was legal. But all this adversity did not break the spirit of young Fredrick, for he possessed an intellectual curiosity undeterred by his circumstances.

At age eight he was sent to Baltimore as a house servant. He became fascinated by the “mystery of reading” and decided that education was ” the pathway from slavery to freedom.” Because it was illegal to educate slaves, Fredrick learned how to read and write by trading bread for reading lessons and tracing over words in discarded spelling books until his handwriting was smooth and graceful. By age 13 he was reading articles about the abolition of slavery to other slaves. When he escaped to freedom at age 20,  Douglass eagerly used his hard-earned wisdom to lecture against slavery and to fight for the emancipation of blacks, woman, and oppressed people.

His lifetime triumphs were many: abolitionist, women’s rights activist, author, owner-editor of antislavery newspapers, a fluent speaker of many languages, Minister of Haiti, and most respected African American orator of the 1800s. In his closing years at Cedar Hill, he was deemed the “Sage of Anacostia,” an accolade that celebrated the intellectual spirit within him that never grew old.