Historic Canton

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland in 1998 by jumping aboard the Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore train as it pulled out of the depot in Canton. He became a leading orator and militant abolitionist who pressed the American conscience toward righteousness, insisting on forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. In July 1852, during a July 4 Independence Day speech in Rochester, New York, he shocked the crowd by asking what the Fourth of July meant to the American slave and declaring that the conscience of the nation must be roused and its hypocrisy exposed. His later influence on President Lincoln helped shape the Emancipation Proclamation in 1883, bringing freedom to all African Americans. Emancipation is celebrated each year on June 19 as Juneteenth Day.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States