He was appointed Postmaster-General by President Harrison in 1889, and in that capacity showed great executive ability.
Prejudice against her race and sex did not deter the colored girl, Edmonia Lewis, from struggling upward to honor and fame as a sculptor.
Fred Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his master's debts.

To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he would become President of the United States.

He saw his mother but two or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn.

He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write.

But somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and then no limits could be placed to his career.