-- By Frederick Douglass -- 

After escaping from the grasp of a birth into slavery, Douglass became the most well regarded African American writer, orator, and social reformist of the 19th century, and perhaps the greatest of all time, maybe only second to Martin Luther King Jr. 

Douglass escaped from slavery around the time he turned 20 year old. His last name was adopted from the poem The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott. In the years after escaping slavery, Douglass worked as a preacher and orator, doing national speaking tours with the American Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass' most famous work was his first autobiography, entitled: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. He would go on to publish two more autobiographies during his lifetime. Douglass directly advised President Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson on the issues of emancipation, treatment of black soldiers in the civil war, and black suffrage. 

The Future of the Colored Race was first published as an essay in 1881. The version you heard today is the revised version from 1892, republished by Douglass just three years before his death on February 20, 1895.