Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 ) was a Black American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping enslavement in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that people of African descent lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Douglass it seemed understood better than most people of his time the intrinsic value of personal freedom and dignity to a truly successful democracy. He once wrote
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/frederickdouglass.htm
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Frederick Douglass