The legacy of Frederick Douglass

TAMPA - In the annual observance of Black History month, one historical figure looms large: Frederick Douglass.

Douglass was a giant of American history who freed himself from slavery, and then helped free thousands more.

He was born in February of 1818, which is one of the reasons Black History Month is celebrated in February.

He fought for equality, voting rights and civil liberties all his life.

Douglass was a clever child who learned to read from white children when it was against the law for black people to be educated. He escaped slavery, and became the eloquent leader of the anti-slavery movement in the decades before the Civil War.

And it was his encounters with Abraham Lincoln that helped persuade the president to make emancipation a cause worth fighting for.

Historical scholar Charles Pace brings Douglass' words to life about the agony of slavery.

"No words, no tears, no thoughts from his victim seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped," Pace says on stage, dressed in costume as Douglass.

The actor performs speeches and excerpts from three autobiographies by Douglass. They reveal how he was a slave in body, but not in mind.

"So when you have a young man, 16 or 17 years of age, who don't know how to be a slave, they would farm you off to a breaker, who would break your spirit. Covey did that for the first six months, then Douglass said 'I showed you how a man became a slave, now let me show you how a slave becomes a man.'"

Douglass escaped slavery when he was 20 and went north. He joined the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts, and became a world famous speaker and author.

Douglass became a trusted adviser to president Lincoln and urged him to let blacks join the Union army against the Confederacy in the Civil War.

"The President was quite clear to say that this war had nothing to do with the black man. This was not a war to free the slaves, but it was a war to save the union," Pace reads. "Several of us maintained, Mr. President if you do not free the slaves, there will be no union."

He published his own newspaper, called the "North Star," in which he pushed for women's rights too.

Pace reflects on Douglass' lifelong fight for freedom.

"He was a radical because he wanted to go the full step. Make the war, a liberation war and arm black men so they could fight for their freedom in the same way men throughout civilization had fought for their freedom," Pace says.

After the war, Frederick Douglass was appointed to political positions like U.S. marshal, and ambassador to Haiti. He died in 1895 at the age 77.