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This item, “The North Star,” was an anti-slavery newspaper published December 1, 1848, 17 years before slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. It was edited and published by Frederick Douglass. The paper’s subtitle “Right is of no sex - The truth is of no color - God is the father of us all, and all we are brethren” highlights the goal and stance of the paper as a whole, arguing for equal rights between slaves and white landowners but also any minority being crushed under the foot of the wealthy, whether enslaved by technicality or wages. The newspaper writing compares these plights to the feudalism of the old days, saying: “The slave system of the South is essentially the feudal system of the middle ages continued; and the serfdom of the producing classes, without regard to color or kindred, is at its very heart and soul.” Douglass sees little difference between the enslaved African American people in the South, and those African Americans in the North who were considered “free” but had in reality little to no choice about the lifestyle they would live. They were forced into any job they could find, they were verbally and physically abused, discriminated against, and mistreated.
Douglass was born as a slave on a plantation in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Being the son of a white father, and a black mother, who died very early in his life, Douglass was hired out to a family in Baltimore, who began formally educating him. He learned quickly and this education helped him escape his slavery as a 21-year old by disguising himself as a free sailor. Douglass decided to live in Massachusetts. The autobiography that he wrote gave him both a measure of fame and enough money for him and a man named Martin Delaney to begin editing and publishing a newspaper, none other than “The North Star.” His objectives in writing this newspaper were simple. To abolish slavery in any form or aspect, but also to promote equality between men and women, a facet of his ideology he had always been vocal about. A newspaper advocating for women’s and African Americans’ rights was extremely controversial, even in the North, and garnered significant criticism, which Douglass promptly ignored. Slavery would have officially been abolished 17 years after this edition of the North Star was published, but Douglass was equally displeased by the rural South’s exploitative market affecting the lower class in the North as much as the legal slavery in the South, so his fight in the U.S. never really ended.