A Suffolk native has been working for the last year and a half to perfect his portrayal of ex-slave, orator, abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass.

Nathan Richardson, a performance poet and creative writing instructor who also is an advertising representative at the Suffolk News-Herald, will take on the Douglass persona again this Tuesday at a Paul D. Camp Community College event in honor of Black History Month.

Richardson said he began doing the Douglass performance as a challenge from one of his friends, who does a lot of work at Colonial Williamsburg and wanted to see him portray a historical figure.

He researched quite a few black leaders, including Booker T. Washington, before choosing Douglass.

“I settled upon Frederick Douglass because I could not only appreciate him in the spirit and words but also physical appearance,” Richardson said. “He wrote in a very poetic context, so it was easy for me to connect with his writings.”

Richardson started his Douglass performances in August with appearances at a one-act play festival at the Smithfield Little Theater as well as at the Virginia Beach Africana Festival.

But the upcoming Paul D. Camp performance, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in room 104 at the Hobbs Suffolk Campus, 271 Kenyon Road, was the first one he booked. He’s had a long relationship with the college and frequently performs his poetry at events.

Richardson said memorizing Douglass’ writings has been the easy part. Far more daunting is trying to get inside his head and learn about his environment during his lifetime so he can answer questions in character.

He draws inspiration from Clay Jenkinson’s portrayal of the country’s third president in “The Thomas Jefferson Hour” on public radio.

“His level of expertise is what I’m striving for,” Richardson said.

Douglass was born a slave around 1818 on a plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, according to a National Parks Service biography. He taught himself to read and write while living in Baltimore. At about the age of 20, he escaped to New York, N.Y., and became an abolitionist orator. He wrote his first autobiography in 1945, hoping to quell rumors that he wasn’t really a fugitive slave. He had to escape to the United Kingdom for a couple of years after writing it, as it revealed his true identity. British supporters raised enough money to purchase his freedom and return him to the United States a legally free man. He continued to speak out against slavery, the suppression of black and women’s suffrage and other atrocities, and also served as a diplomat to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, until his death in 1895.