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50 free Frederick Douglass trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Frederick Douglass trivia quiz follows the man born Frederick Bailey on Maryland's Eastern Shore through a Baltimore mistress's forbidden alphabet lessons, a fistfight with a 'slave-breaker', a 24-hour escape by train and steamboat, and on to the lecture circuit, the bestselling Narrative, two years in Ireland and Britain, the North Star, the split with Garrison, Seneca Falls, John Brown, Lincoln, the Freedman's Bank, Haiti and Cedar Hill. The easy questions are ones most people know: what he escaped from, what he wrote, which cause he championed. The medium ones cover his family, his newspapers, his speeches, his government posts and his views on the Constitution. The hard ones dig into how he chose his surname, who bought his freedom, the Pendleton mob, the stone quarry meeting, the Woodhull ticket and why he never smiled for a photograph. It suits a Black History Month lesson, an American history class or anyone who wants to test what they really know about the most influential African American of the 19th century. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Frederick Douglass's surname at birth?
Bailey
He was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and dropped the middle names before choosing a new surname in the North.
Q 02In which state was Douglass born into slavery?
Maryland
He grew up in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
Q 03Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14 because his mother called him what?
Her 'Little Valentine'
He never knew his exact birth date; historian Dickson Preston later fixed it as February 1818.
Q 04Who first began teaching the roughly 12-year-old Douglass the alphabet in Baltimore?
Sophia Auld
Her husband Hugh stopped the lessons, which Douglass called the first 'antislavery lecture' he ever heard.
Q 05Which classroom anthology did Douglass credit with defining his views on freedom and human rights?
The Columbian Orator
First published in 1797, it was a reader of essays, speeches and dialogues that he found at about age 12.
Q 06Douglass fought and defeated which 'slave-breaker' at the age of 16?
Edward Covey
'You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man,' he wrote of the fight.
Q 07What trade was Douglass hired out to learn in a Baltimore shipyard in 1835?
Ship caulker
White workers who feared competition from slave labour abused him there.
Q 08On September 3, 1838, Douglass escaped Baltimore by what means?
Boarding a northbound train
He wore a sailor's uniform and carried a free seaman's papers; the whole journey took less than 24 hours.
Q 09Who provided the sailor's uniform and money that made Douglass's escape possible?
Anna Murray, his future wife
A free black woman about five years his senior, she married him in New York eleven days after he arrived.
Q 10Douglass's surname was suggested by a friend who had just read which poem by Walter Scott?
The Lady of the Lake
He had briefly used the names Stanley and Johnson, but Johnson was too common in his new town.
Q 11In which Massachusetts whaling town did the newly free Douglass and his wife first settle in 1838?
New Bedford
It was an abolitionist centre full of former enslaved people; they moved to Lynn in 1841.
Q 12Douglass became a licensed preacher in 1839 in which denomination?
African Methodist Episcopal Zion
The church also counted Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman among its members.
Q 13Which abolitionist paper did young Douglass rank 'second only to The Bible' in his heart?
The Liberator
Its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, became his mentor before a famous split.
Q 21Which musical instrument did Douglass take up during his British tour and play for the rest of his life?
Violin
His grandson Joseph Henry Douglass became a renowned concert violinist.
Q 22What was the name of the abolitionist newspaper Douglass founded in upstate New York in 1847?
The North Star
It was printed in the basement of a church and paid for with £500 from English supporters.
Q 23Roughly how many fugitive slaves did Douglass and his wife shelter in their home?
More than 400
Their upstate New York house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Q 14Where did the 23-year-old Douglass give his first major anti-slavery speech in 1841?
Nantucket
He spoke at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's convention days after being unexpectedly asked to tell his story.
Q 15During the 1843 'Hundred Conventions' tour, a mob broke Douglass's hand in which Indiana town?
Pendleton
A Quaker family rescued him; the hand healed badly and troubled him for life.
Q 16What was the title of the 1845 bestseller that was his first autobiography?
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Within a few years it was reprinted nine times and translated into French and Dutch.
Q 17How many autobiographies did Douglass publish in his lifetime?
Three
The last, Life and Times, came out in 1881 and was revised in 1892.
Q 18Why did Douglass's friends urge him to tour Ireland and Britain after the Narrative was published?
Fear that his ex-owner would try to reclaim him
He sailed on the Cambria in August 1845 and stayed abroad two years.
Q 19Which Irish nationalist did Douglass befriend and call a great inspiration during his 1845 visit?
Daniel O'Connell
Douglass arrived just as the Great Famine was beginning.
Q 20How did Douglass become legally free in 1846?
British supporters raised funds to buy his freedom
Anna Richardson and her sister-in-law Ellen of Newcastle upon Tyne led the effort.
Q 24Douglass split with William Lloyd Garrison around 1847 over what question?
Whether the Constitution was pro- or anti-slavery
Garrison burned copies of the Constitution; Douglass came to see it as a weapon against slavery.
Q 25Douglass was the only black person to attend which 1848 gathering?
Seneca Falls Convention
His speech helped pass Elizabeth Cady Stanton's resolution for women's suffrage.
Q 26Douglass gave his speech 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' in which city?
Rochester
Delivered on July 5, 1852, one biographer called it 'perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given.'
Q 27Of which organisation, the first black labour union in the US, was Douglass elected vice president in 1850?
American League of Colored Laborers
He had helped found it.
Q 28Where did Douglass secretly meet John Brown shortly before the Harpers Ferry raid?
An abandoned stone quarry near Chambersburg
After 'a day and a night' of talks he refused to join, judging the mission suicidal; he kept the meeting secret for 20 years.
Q 29Which document did John Brown write during a two-week stay at Douglass's home in 1859?
His Provisional Constitution
Brown visited two months before the raid; Douglass fled to Canada and then England after it failed.
Q 30Douglass is described as the most ___ American of the 19th century.
photographed
He never smiled for the camera, refusing to feed the caricature of the happy enslaved person.