NY College Giving Honorary Degree to Frederick Douglass

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Abolitionist Frederick Douglass this weekend will receive the first posthumous honorary degree ever granted by the University of Rochester.

The escaped slave's great-great-great-grandson, Kenneth Morris Jr., is scheduled to accept the honorary doctor of law degree during Sunday's commencement ceremony.

The University of Rochester is home to the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies, and has a collection of Frederick Douglass materials.

Douglass was born a slave on a Maryland plantation in 1818 and escaped to the North at age 20 with the help of his future wife.

They settled in Rochester where Douglass founded an abolitionist newspaper.