Frederick Douglass
(February 1818? – February 20, 1895)
Cedar Hill, 1411 W St. SE, Anacostia neighborhood, DC. Now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service.
Social reformer, statesman, powerful orator, and writer, Douglass was born a slave in Talbot County, MD, and became a leader in the abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement. From 1889 to 1891, he was Consul-General to the Republic of Haiti.
His memoirs include A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892).
Douglass moved to DC in 1872, and purchased Cedar Hill in 1877. He worked as an editor for the abolitionist newspaper New National Era, served as a US Marshall and the DC Recorder of Deeds. He is remembered locally by a bridge across the Anacostia River named in his honor. A statue of Douglass is in the main lobby of the DC Courthouse, awaiting approval for inclusion in National Statuary Hall in the US Capitol.
This windowless stone outbuilding is a recreation of Douglass's writing studio at Cedar Hill. Douglass called his studio The Growlery.
320 A St. NE, Capitol Hill neighborhood, DC.
Now the Frederick Douglass Museum and Hall of Fame for Caring Americans.
National Park Service
Frederick Douglass Museum
The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project
Author photo courtesy of Library of Congress.
