As a journalist, Frederick Douglass is mainly remembered for establishing the North Star, one of the most highly acclaimed abolitionist newspapers. He also founded and edited Douglass' Monthly, one of the few abolitionist magazines.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland, probably in 1817. His mother, Harriet Bailey, could read-an unusual skill for a slave. His father may have been his white master. As a child he escaped the rigors of field labor for a time when he was sent from Lloyd Plantation in Talbot County to Fell Point in Baltimore, where he served as companion to the son of Hugh Auld, the younger brother of the overseer at Lloyd Plantation. Auld's kindhearted wife, Sophia Auld, taught him to read and write. He lived a remarkably unconfined life in Baltimore, cultivating white friends and, to a degree, moving freely in both white and black circles...