Frederick Douglass, well-known abolitionist and civil rights activist, edited three newspapers between 1847 and 1863. The fi rst was the North Star, an antislavery paper in which he and other African American reformers (along with some whites) expressed their views; it began publishing as a weekly on December 3, 1847, at Rochester, New York. In 1841, Douglass, an escaped slave, had begun acting as a lecturer for white-dominated antislavery societies. William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent abolitionist in America, brought Douglass into his circle of reformers, where he proved to be a quick study. Garrison was also the most radical of the abolitionists, demanding an immediate, complete, and uncompensated end to slavery. Garrison and his followers rejected the U.S. Constitution as a proslavery document and urged all to avoid organized religion because most denominations had ties to southern churches that openly supported slavery. Although Douglass initially adopted all the arguments of the Garrisonians, his travels and intellectual development led him to question the effectiveness of their positions. Initiating his own newspaper and physically moving away from New England allowed Douglass to develop independent views on many reform issues.