Frederick Douglass was a former slave who became a leading abolitionist and social reformer. When too ill to continue his speaking engagements, he wrote letters of support for the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells to take his place.

No doubt compelled and troubled by the ways that the racist and inhumane logic that undergirded slavery had continued to render African American lives precariously nearly three decades after the institution had been eradicated, the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass penned this letter to affirm his support of his colleague Ida B. Wells’ determined civil rights and anti-lynching activism at home and abroad. Douglass’ praise of Wells demonstrates his embrace of a new generation of committed activists whose social and political agitation would be necessary to effect change across the United States in hopes of rendering the nation a more perfect, just, and democratic union.

Today this letter is housed in The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

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NYPL Frederick Douglass Letter for Civil Rights Journal