Frederick Douglass was born a slave in February of 1818. Although no official record of his birthday exists, it is commonly attributed to today, Valentine's Day, because his mother called him her "little valentine." 
Douglass was an abolitionist and suffragist, but his focus on the voting rights of black men, to the exclusion of women, caused a grievous break with his old friends Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The break did not heal until...
...passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, when Douglass redoubled his efforts on behalf of women, penning "Women and the Ballot" (1870) and other feminist works.
On February 20, 1895, he spent his last day with his dear friend and ally Anthony at a Women’s Council in Washington D.C. She escorted him to the platform, where they sat together. According to his New York Times obituary, Douglass grew very animated that evening while...
...telling his wife about the events of the day when he collapsed and died. The Times also reported that when Anthony learned that Douglass had died, she was "very much affected" and "could not conceal her emotions."
"[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air...”
“...subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence."
—From Frederick Douglass' Paper, June 10, 1853
—From Frederick Douglass' Paper, June 10, 1853
