On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Frederick Douglass was one of the most important personalities in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. He visited Belfast as a ‘fugitive slave’ in 1845 and again in 1846. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born c.1817 on a Maryland plantation. He had an African slave mother and a white father, possibly his overseer, Aaron Anthony. He was bright and taught himself to read and write, in secret as learning was forbidden. The first book he bought included accounts of the suffering of…
Frederick Douglass, ‘fugitive slave’ visited Belfast in the 1840s
