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Life as a Freeman
Chapter 25
Introduced to the Abolitionists
At a Nantucket convention in 1841, Douglass gives his first public speech and is recruited as a paid lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society — a role that eventually forces him to publish his exact origins in slavery to silence doubters, at real risk of recapture.
The 1841 Nantucket convention and Garrison's responseBecoming a paid anti-slavery lecturerPressure to stick to simple narrative rather than argumentPublishing his 1845 Narrative to prove he had been a slave