Editing Frederick Douglass (section)

===Ideological refinement===
[[File:Motto frederick douglass 2.jpg|thumb|Frederick Douglass in 1856, around 38 years of age]]
In 1850, Douglass was elected the vice president of the [[American League of Colored Laborers]], the first black labor union in the United States, which he had also helped found.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bradley |first=Jonathan |date=January 4, 2011 |title=American League of Colored Laborers (1850-?) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/american-league-colored-laborers-1850/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240205065637/https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/american-league-colored-laborers-1850/ |archive-date=February 5, 2024 |access-date=April 26, 2024 |website=[[BlackPast.org]]}}</ref> Meanwhile, in 1851, he merged the ''North Star'' with [[Gerrit Smith]]'s Liberty Party paper to form ''Frederick Douglass' Paper'',<ref>Blight, David W., ''Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom'', p. 213.</ref> which was published until 1859.<ref>[https://nyheritage.org/collections/frederick-douglass-paper Frederick Douglass' Paper]</ref>

On July 5, 1852, Douglass delivered an address in  [[Corinthian Hall (Rochester, New York)|Corinthian Hall]] at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. This speech eventually became known as "[[What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?]]"; one biographer called it "perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given."<ref>{{Cite book |last=McFeely |first=William S. |author-link=William S. McFeely |url=https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00will_0 |title=Frederick Douglass |date=1991 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |isbn=978-0-393-02823-2 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00will_0/page/173/mode/2up 173] |url-access=registration}}</ref> In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester. Douglass was one of five people whose names were attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, ''The Claims of Our Common Cause''. The other four were [[Amos Noë Freeman]], [[James Monroe Whitfield]], [[Henry O. Wagoner]], and [[George Boyer Vashon]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Douglass |first=Frederick |url=https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00fred |title=Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings |date=1999 |publisher=Chicago Review Press |isbn=978-1-55652-349-6 |editor-last=Foner |editor-first=Philip S. |editor-link=Philip Foner |location=Chicago |pages=[https://archive.org/details/frederickdouglas00fred/page/260/mode/2up 260]–271 |editor-last2=Taylor |editor-first2=Yuval |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Like many abolitionists, Douglass believed that education would be crucial for African Americans to improve their lives; he was an early advocate for [[School integration in the United States|school desegregation]]. In the 1850s, Douglass observed that New York's facilities and instruction for African American children were vastly inferior to those for European Americans. Douglass called for court action to open all schools to all children. He said that full inclusion within the educational system was a more pressing need for African Americans than political issues such as suffrage.