Sir, - Frederick Douglas, a man born a slave in Maryland in 1817, who escaped from slavery 20 years later and devoted his life to winning freedom for all negroes, visited Ireland for four months in 1845.
He recalled the time he spent in Ireland as the happiest of his life. The complete lack of anti-negro prejudice, the open door everywhere made him cry out with joy. He wrote of his Irish experience in the abolitionist paper, the Liberator, in January 1846: "The warm and generous co-operation extended to me by the friends of my despised race ... the entire absence of everything that looked like prejudice against me, on account of the colour of my skin, contrasting so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States that I look with wonder and amazement on the transition." - Yours, etc.,
John F. Igoe
Highfield Road, Rathgar, Dublin 6.