Frederick Douglass was unquestionably the most famous African American of the nineteenth century; indeed, when he died in 1895 he was among the most distinguished public figures in the United States.

Frederick Douglass called it "a sacred effort," and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address.

By joining Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Richard Wright in the act of literary testimony, Malcolm became part of the most essential genre of African-American literature.