name so the slave catchers would not catch him. So by the suggestion of Johnson, Frederick Baily became Frederick Douglass. In June 1839 Anna gave birth to their first child Rosetta, the next year they had a son Lewis. Douglass became involved in the abolitionist movement next. Someone approached Douglass and asked him if he wanted a subscription to the Liberator, an abolitionist paper written by William Lloyd Garrison. Like Garrison, most of the leaders in the society were white, and black abolitionists sometimes had a difficult time making their voices heard within the movement. Douglass also became very involved with the local black community, and he served as a preacher at the black Zion Methodist Church. Douglass, along with others in the abolitionist movement were opposed to African colonization schemes, believing that the United States was the true home of black Americans. In March 1839 some of Douglass's anticolonization statements were published in the Liberator. In August 1841 at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, Douglass saw William Lloyd Garrison, for the first time. A few days later Douglass spoke before a crowd attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison saw Douglass's and thought he could be a speaker, so he hired him as agent for the society. His job was to talk about his life and to sell subscriptions to the Liberator and the Anti-Slavery Standard. "The paper became my meat and drink," Douglass said, For the next ten years Douglass was associated with Garrison and the antislavery movement. For three months in 1851, Douglass traveled with other abolitionists to lectures through Massachusetts. Introduced as "a piece of property" or "a graduate from that peculiar institution, with his diploma written on his back," he launched into stirring recollections of his years in slavery. Many of his friends in New Bedford thought that the publicity was dangerous f...
