Chris Calle: Frederick Douglass

Artist: Chris Calle
1961 -
Nationality: American
Artwork Year: 1995
Image Size: 12 by 14.5 inches
Overall Size: 18 by 23 inches
Medium: Mixed Media on Cold Press Illustration Board

In 1817, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland. When he was only eight, he was sent to Baltimore to work for one of his master's relatives. He worked in a shipyard caulking wooden ships to make them watertight until 1838, when he ran away to New Bedford, Massachusetts, changing his name to Frederick Douglass to avoid capture. At first he found work in New Bedford as a caulker, but when other men refused to work beside a black, he took whatever work he could get, mostly collecting rubbish and digging cellars. When he gave a speech at a meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, he so impressed his audience that he was hired to lecture about his experiences as a slave. Douglass used his lecture earnings to aid fugitive slaves and also headed the Rochester station of the Underground Railroad. In 1845, he published The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography that revealed his master's identity and threatened the former slave's freedom. He fled to England that same year, where his stirring antislavery oratory motivated British friends to raise enough money to buy his freedom. Douglas returned to America in 1847 and founded an antislavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. During the Civil War, he helped recruit blacks for the Union Army and met with President Abraham Lincoln on several occasions to discuss the problems of slavery.

This painting originally appeared on the Fleetwood® First Day Cover for the U.S. 32¢ Frederick Douglass Classic Collection Series stamp issued June 29, 1995.

Artwork Copyright © 1995 Unicover Corporation. All Rights Reserved under United States and international copyright laws. You may not reproduce, distribute, transmit, or otherwise exploit the Artwork in any way. Images of the Artwork may be watermarked and/or digitally watermarked. Any sale of the physical original does not include or convey the Copyright or any right comprised in the copyright.

Our Stock Number (SKU): XB15198

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