Frederick Douglass died suddenly at his home on the evening of February 20, 1895, most likely from a heart attack (sometimes described as a heart attack or stroke) shortly after returning from a women’s rights meeting in Washington, D.C.

He had spent that day attending a meeting of the National Council of Women (a major women’s rights gathering) in Washington, D.C., where he was warmly received and publicly honored. After the meeting, he went back to his residence (Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia area of Washington), reportedly in high spirits and eager to talk about the event. Not long after arriving home, he collapsed and died; contemporary accounts and later historians attribute the cause to heart disease, typically described as a sudden heart attack, with some older references allowing that it might have been a stroke.

Douglass was 77 years old at the time of his death, and news of his passing led to large public mourning, including a major funeral service at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church and burial in Rochester, New York, where he had lived for many years.

TL;DR: When people ask “how did Frederick Douglass die,” the historical consensus is that he died suddenly at age 77 from heart disease (a heart attack, sometimes described as heart attack or stroke) at home, just hours after speaking at a women’s rights convention in Washington, D.C.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.