Frederick Douglass will get his quarter after all.
The D.C. Office of the Secretary and the United States Mint have announced that the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site will be featured on a quarter scheduled for release in 2017.
Douglass, the famed abolitionist, author and orator, was a finalist for the original D.C. “state” quarter, along with Benjamin Banneker and Duke Ellington. Ellington, the jazz legend and D.C. native, ultimately won out. The Ellington quarter was issued earlier this year.
Cedar Hill, Douglass’ D.C. estate, was selected by the Treasury Department as the District’s representative for the America the Beautiful quarter program. The design will not be ready until 2016, a mint spokesman said.
“Frederick Douglass is known as both the sage and the lion of Anacostia, and his home here is one of our proudest monuments,” said David Garber, who writes the And Now, Anacostia blog. “It is more than past time for this oft-forgotten area of the city to get some positive national recognition.”
Douglass was born in 1818 in Maryland. He escaped from slavery and became a staunch supporter of the Union cause, helping to recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. He moved to D.C. in 1872, and five years later was named U.S. Marshal for the District by President Hayes. In 1881, President Garfield appointed Douglass as D.C.’s first recorder of deeds.
Douglass “epitomizes the District’s struggle for basic rights in his escape from slavery, abolitionist cause, and the fight for women’s suffrage,” D.C. explained in the narrative it turned into the mint ahead of the original quarter competition.
He purchased Cedar Hill at 1411 W St. SE, in 1877. It was first authorized as a national historic site on Sept. 5, 1962.
The mint plans to issue 56 new national park quarters over the next 11 years, the first five in 2010.
Douglass, along with Pierre L’Enfant, also was chosen by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to be immortalized as a statue placed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where the District is currently not represented. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced her legislation earlier this year to permit two D.C. statues in the hall.
The 850-pound bronze of Douglass is currently standing inside One Judiciary Square.
