Frederick Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, consistent, and unyielding agitation.
 Douglass's was one of five names attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause, along with Amos No Freeman, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O
 In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, an anthology that he discovered at about age 12, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights

