On the warm late-summer afternoon of September 1, 1877, Frederick Douglass stood at the crest of a hill overlooking Washington, D.C. Below, the young neighborhood of Anacostia stretched toward the river, its streets lined with trees and tidy homes.
Behind him rose a handsome brick house, a place he had just purchased for $6,700—a considerable sum for a man who had once been enslaved.
Douglass christened the home Cedar Hill and officially moved in during the fall of 1878. For the rest of his life, it would be both his sanctuary and his stage…