A very influential African American leader of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass used his exceptional skills as an orator, writer, journalist, and politician to fight for the abolition of slavery and for an end to racial discrimination. He helped to shape the climate of public opinion that led to the ratification of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were created in large measure to protect, respectively, the freedom, citizenship, and voting rights of ex-slaves. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) is a classic account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery for slave and slaveholder alike.
