The Lost Museum Archive

This oil painting, by an unknown artist, captured the African-American abolitionist just six years after his escape from slavery; he was 26 years old. The following year, in 1845, Douglass published his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Douglass worked as a writer, editor, and speaker against slavery and, after the Civil War, against disenfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence. The most well-known African American of the nineteenth century, Douglass was keenly aware of the power of dignified images to counter the racist visual stereotyping of African Americans.