Candombe has had a significant role in the culture of Uruguay in the last two hundred years, it was recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage of humanity. It is a cultural manifestation Originated from the arrival of slaves from Africa. There are to a lesser extent, manifestations of Candombe in Argentina and Brazil. In Argentina, it can be found in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Paraná, Salta and Corrientes. In Brazil, it still retains its religious character and can be found in Minas Gerais State.

According to George Reid Andrews, the historian of Montevideo Black communities, after the middle of the 19th century younger blacks in particular abandoned the candombe in favor of dances from Europe such as the mazurka. Meanwhile, whites began to imitate the steps and movements of blacks. Calling themselves Los Negros, upper class portenos in the 1860s and 1870s blackened their faces and formed one of the carnival processions each year.

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave.

Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his experiences in slavery in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became influential in its support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free". Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Without his approval he became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable and small Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass held multiple public offices.