Who Was Frederick Douglass?

<p>A boy born into slavery who taught himself to read and write<br />A young man who escaped to freedom in the North<br />The father of the civil rights movement</p> <p>Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom&ndash;and once he realized that knowledge was power, he secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage. After escaping to the North in 1838, as a free man he gave powerful speeches about his experience as a slave. He was so impressive that he became a friend of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as one of the most famous abolitionists of the nineteenth century.</p>