Because he didn’t see himself as a victim or part of a special class of citizen and only wanted to be treated as an equal among men...
Frederick Douglass was a very unique man. His two sons, Charles and Lewis served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. His second wife, Helen Pitts was white, which didn’t set well with his children. But when he died, she made sure that the house he lived in, Cedar Hill in Washington, was preserved just the way it was when he died. I visited it many years ago, and it was well worth the trip. I was born in Rochester, New York, where he lived for about 25 years, and published his newspaper, The North Star there. A statue of him was erected in front of the New York Central Train Station on the corner of St. Paul Street and Central Avenue on June 8, 1899. In 1941, the statue was moved to Highland Park not far from where his house once stood, and remained there until it was moved to South Avenue and Robinson Drive in the fall of 2019 as the centerpiece of a new Frederick Douglass Memorial Plaza. I read that since the move it has been vandalized twice, and at this point, I don’t even know if the site is open. Douglass is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery which is on Mount Hope Avenue in Rochester. On one of my trips to Rochester, I visited his grave site.