The name given me by my beloved mother was no less pretentious than “Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.” I had, however, before leaving Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained the name Frederick Bailey.
Douglass discusses the evolution of his name, reflecting on his identity and heritage as he transitioned from slavery to freedom.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.