Frederick Douglass Visited Port Deposit and Rising Sun in 1885

(WoCCP) Just days before Cecil County residents celebrated the arrival of a New Year, welcoming in 1886, an aging social reformer, orator, and writer, traveled to Cecil County to lecture on “The Self-Made Man.” On his way to Rising Sun where the town’s literary society was sponsoring the program, the abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass, who’d escaped from slavery, stopped for a few hours in Port Deposit. There he attracted considerable attention. Continued

Image: "Frederick Douglass appealing to President Lincoln and his cabinet to enlist Negroes," mural by William Edouard Scott, at the Recorder of Deeds building, built in 1943. 515 D St., NW, Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress).