My Bondage and My Freedom

After ten years of reflection following his legal emancipation in 1846 and his split from his mentor William Lloyd Garrison former slave Frederick Douglass published his second autobiography which pushed him into the international spotlight as the leading voice for American blacks both freed and slave. My Bondage and My Freedom which he wrote during his illustrious career as a public speaker and newspaper editor shows how Frederick Douglass who wrote the Narrative of His Life (1845) had matured and become a more forceful analytical and complex writer with a deepened commitment to the struggle for equal rights and liberties.