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Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, and escaped slavery in 1838 after 20 years of enslavement.

Douglass authored three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).

He co-founded The North Star anti-slavery newspaper in 1847, served as an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and became the first African American to receive U.S. Senate confirmation for a Presidential appointment when appointed U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia in 1877.

Douglass was appointed president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company in 1874 and served as Minister to Haiti in 1889 under President Benjamin Harrison.

The Senate recognizes February 2018 as the Bicentennial of Frederick Douglass, who died on February 20, 1895, and whose Washington, D.C. home was designated a National Historic Site in 1988.