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Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
Unidentified photographer
Ambrotype, 1856

Enlarged image

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor


Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
Unidentified photographer
Ambrotype, 1856

After Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, he invented the concept ofAfrican American public individuality, investing it with a fierce public dignity evident in this image. Self-educated, Douglass became a powerful orator and writer advocating racial pride and social change through direct, even violent political action. The women’s rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton referred to his bearing this way: “he stood there like an African prince, conscious of his dignity and power, grand in his physical proportions, majestic in his wrath.” His example provided a foundation for the emergence of the concept of cool itself from African American culture in the 1940s.



Enlarged image

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor