American the Beautiful: Frederick Douglass

The second coin in the American the Beautiful series for 2017 is here at ISN Precious Metals: Frederick Douglass. This coin comes encased along with a black velvet bag to help protect it from damage.

Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, writer, statesman, and orator. He believed in the equality of all men and women, regardless of the color their skin.

"The most influential African American of the nineteenth century, Douglass made a career of agitating the American conscience. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women's rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education, and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted the bulk of his time, immense talent, and boundless energy to ending slavery and gaining equal rights for African Americans. These were the central concerns of his long reform career. Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. And he recognized that African Americans must play a conspicuous role in that struggle. Less than a month before his death, when a young black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, Douglass replied without hesitation: "Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass