Frederick Douglas ─ Selected Speeches and Writings

One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during his life?from the abolition of slavery to women’s rights, from the Civil War to lynching, from American patriotism to black nationalism. Between 1950 and 1975, Philip S. Foner collected the most important of Douglass’s hundreds of speeches, letters, articles, and editorials into an impressive five-volume set, now long out of print. Abridged and condensed into one volume, and supplemented with several important texts that Foner did not include, this compendium presents the most significant, insightful, and elegant short works of Douglass’s massive oeuvre.

Philip S. Foner wrote and edited more than 100 books, including The Black Panthers Speak, The History of Black Americans, and the 10-volume The History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Yuval Taylor edited I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives; as editor of Lawrence Hill Books, he directs the Library of Black America series. He lives in Chicago.