Frederick Douglass's life encompassed slavery and freedom, absolute poverty and international fame and gentility. Though he made his escape from slavery at the age of twenty-one, he spent his remaining fifty-seven years fighting that institution through oratory and the press. His North Star was among the first successful black newspapers in the United States, and his three autobiographical books were early, stinging indictments written as first-person accounts of life amid slavery.

His work as editor and writer served to counteract much of the antiblack, proslavery sentiment of the rest of the American press system. One example of the latter, apocryphal though it may be, is the retort by the editor of the famous New York Sun when blacks wanted a retraction printed after slanderous comments were published concerning black businessmen. They were told that the Sun shone for white men, not black; and if the gentlemen wanted anything...