1838

Frederick Douglass, 20, escaped from Baltimore by dressing as a sailor and traveling by train and steamboat to New York, then New Bedford, Massachusetts. Within three years he was speaking for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His first autobiography, 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' (1845), sold 11,000 copies in its first three years and became the most influential slave narrative in American letters.

Frederick Douglass, 20, escaped from Baltimore by dressing as a sailor and traveling by train to New York, then New Bedford, Massachusetts. Within three years he was speaking for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His 1845 'Narrative' sold 11,000 copies in three years and became the most influential slave narrative in American letters.

Frederick Douglass, then 20, escaped from Baltimore by boarding a train north disguised as a free Black sailor using borrowed sailor's papers. He reached New York City on September 3, 1838, and within days married Anna Murray and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, launching one of the most consequential abolitionist careers in American history.

Charles Lenox Remond of Salem, Massachusetts, was hired as a full-time lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1838, becoming the first Black American employed as a professional abolitionist speaker. He toured New England and Ireland delivering hundreds of lectures for three years before Frederick Douglass emerged as a peer lecturer in 1841.

David Ruggles, the Black New York bookseller, printer, and abolitionist who had personally assisted Frederick Douglass's escape, published the Mirror of Liberty — generally considered the first magazine published by a Black American in the United States. Ruggles had also organized the New York Committee of Vigilance in 1835, which helped over 600 freedom-seekers in its first year alone, including Douglass, whose escape Ruggles personally arranged.

David Ruggles, Black New York printer and abolitionist, published the Mirror of Liberty — the first magazine published by a Black American. Ruggles had also organized the New York Committee of Vigilance in 1835, which helped over 600 freedom-seekers in its first year, including Frederick Douglass, whose escape Ruggles personally arranged.

Lewis Woodson, an AME minister and educator, published a series of essays in The Colored American under the pen name 'Augustine' that laid out a philosophy of Black self-reliance, community economic development, and separate Black institutions. Historians have called Woodson the 'Father of Black Nationalism' for articulating ideas that would later be adopted by Martin Delany, Booker T. Washington, and Marcus Garvey. His writings established an ideological tradition of Black self-determination that ran parallel to integrationist abolitionism.

Robert Purvis, a wealthy mixed-race Philadelphian and leading abolitionist, founded and chaired the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee in 1838, the most active Underground Railroad operation in the country. The committee assisted hundreds of freedom-seekers annually, providing them with money, transportation, legal aid, and shelter. Purvis also helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society and was a fierce, lifelong opponent of the American Colonization Society's plans to remove free Black people from the United States.