Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)

Frederick Douglass was a former plantation slave from Maryland in the USA, who went on to became a national leader of the Abolitionist movement. From 1846 Douglass spent two years in Ireland and Great Britain, where he spoke against slavery, often to large audiences in churches and chapels. Abolitionist supporters, Anna and Henry Richardson, Quakers from Newcastle, raised £150 (about £17,000 in 2019 terms) to buy Douglass' freedom from his American owner Thomas Auld. For a time Douglass lived with the Richardsons in their house on Summerhill Grove, Newcastle. Douglass returned to the USA in 1847 and was soon publishing an abolitionist newspaper, the "North Star".