Black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was a former slave who became a renowned orator and author.
Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818, he spent the first twenty years of his life enslaved in Maryland. He managed to teach himself to read and write during this time.
“In 1838, he fled north and changed his name to Frederick Douglass” in order to elude slave-hunters. (His new surname was chosen by a friend who’d been reading The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott.)
Douglass began giving speeches about his life as a slave, and in 1845 published his first (and most famous) autobiography: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. According to one source, “Frederick Douglass was the most prominent black man in the United States” by the time of the Civil War.
Going by what I was able to find in the records, dozens of baby boys were named after Frederick Douglass during his lifetime. Some examples…
- Frederick Douglass Smith (b. 1854 in New York)
- He was the son of James McCune Smith, the first African-American to earn a medical degree.
- Frederick Douglass Seville (b. 1862 in Pennsylvania)
- Frederick Douglass Parker (b. 1865 in Ohio)
- Frederick Douglass Marshall (b. 1875 in South Carolina)
- Frederick Douglass Sharper (b. 1875 in Virginia)
- Frederick Douglass McGee (b. 1877 in Ohio)
- Frederick Douglass Hampton (b. 1877 in North Carolina)
- Frederick Douglass McCracken (b. 1879 in Iowa)
- Frederick Douglass Snadon (b. 1879 in Kentucky)
- Frederick Douglass Washington (b. 1880, likely in North Carolina)
- Frederick Douglass McCarthy (b. 1883 in Massachusetts)
- Frederick Douglass Wilkinson (b. 1886 in South Carolina)
- Frederick Douglass Farrar (b. 1887 in Missouri)
- Frederick Douglass Collins (b. 1887 in Texas)
- Frederick Douglass Brown (b. 1888 in Virginia)
- Frederick Douglass Cornish (b. 1889 in Maryland)
- Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard (b. 1894 in Illinois)
- He was one of the first two African-Americans to play in the National Football League.
One of his later namesakes was Douglas Wilder (b. 1931), the first African-American to be elected governor of a U.S. state (Virginia).
Sources: Frederick Douglass – Wikipedia, Frederick Douglass – White House Historical Association, Frederick Douglass – American Battlefield Trust, FamilySearch.org, Find a Grave
Image: Frederick Douglass (c. 1879)
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