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Given his newfound celebrity, Douglass sensed that his slave masters would dispatch agents to return him to Maryland. He fled to England and raised enough money to purchase his freedom. Upon his return to the United States he found his historic newspaper. Douglass was a skilled orator whom historians often cite as having no equal. His epic speech — “What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July?” – was delivered on Independence Day in 1852 in Rochester, NY, and stands as a seminal commentary on the disenfranchisement of Blacks in the United States. Douglass later wrote two autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).
Juxtaposed against the liberties blacks enjoy today, it is difficult to fathom the inner strength of Douglass against the backdrop of the brutality of slavery. Drawing from his faith and a belief in a greater destiny for his people, Frederick Douglass is the standard towards which present Black “leadership” should strive to achieve.
There is a new generation of Black Americans who must now continue the struggle to its logical conclusion: The recognition of people of African descent as full and equal citizens in the democracy.
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