"Why is the Negro Lynched?" by Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In this book, he tackles the horrific practice of lynching in an attempt to educate ignorant readers of the nonsensical nature of this sort of cruelty.