Rosetta was born to Anna Murray Douglass and Frederick Douglass in 1839, in Bedford, Massachusetts. When she was five, she moved with her parents to Lynn, Massachusetts. Rosetta was a critical thinker like her father, but struggled against the demands of gender roles during her time. When she was six, she stayed with Abigail and Lydia Mott, from Albany, New York. Abigail taught her to read and write, and Lydia taught her to sew. At eleven, she assisted her father in making and packaging his newspaper. On December 24, 1863, she married Nathan Sprague. Her husband was an ex-slave and poorly educated, and struggled to find his footing and a job. She did not support her father's interracial marriage after her mother's death. She had seven children, and many grandchildren.
In 1845, the Rochester Board of Education closed public schools to black students. Frederick Douglass sent Rosetta to a private school rather than send her to an all-black school that Rochester set up for black students. She eventually was tutored from age 2 to 7. In 1848, Rosetta was admitted into the Seward Seminary in Rochester, New York. Rosetta was segregated from the white students while she was there, and her father spoke out against this in his newspaper. She also attended Oberlin College’s Young Ladies Preparatory and New Jersey’s Salem Normal School.
Douglass worked as a teacher. She eventually became primarily a homemaker and wife. She wrote the paper My Mother as I Recall Her in 1900, as well as the paper What Role is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?
Douglass worked along with her father, and had a keen sense of social justice issues. She advised her father against accepting the presidency of the Freedman’s Bank. She went on to become a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women.
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