Frederick Douglass (1817 – 1895) was one of America’s foremost abolitionists. Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 and escaped into freedom in 1838. He eventually settled in Massachusetts, where he gave many anti-slavery speeches, including in Lowell. He spoke at Huntington Hall, one of the city’s largest speaking halls. Most notably, Douglas met with his former enslavers, telling the public “This is not a lesson in forgiveness,” and referred to his former captors as “agents of hell.”
