Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was born in or around 1817 into slavery in Maryland. He escaped in 1838. He was a great orator and writer, and he was a leading figure in the abolitionist m movement. He was the son of Harriet Bailey and an unknown white man. His mother was a slave so therefore he was born a slave. He was separated from his mother when only a few weeks old. His grandparents raised him. When he turned eight, he was sent to a woman who took care of slave children on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. When he was nine, he was sent to Baltimore where he lived with Mr. an