There can be no list of great bearded blokes, in my opinion, that is not headed by Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass
Great Bearded Bloke #1

Here is a synopsis of the life of Frederick Douglass:

• After being born into slavery, Douglass endured, in a not uncommon story, many beatings and squalid conditions his whole childhood and adolescence only to escape as a 20 year old.
• A skilled orator, Douglass was a forceful advocate for the abolition of slavery and spoke often his life as a slave despite often being accosted by pro-slavery groups including being beaten by a mob after a speech in Indiana.
• He was an early proponent of women’s rights, particularly women’s suffrage.
• Douglass was an early advocate for the desegregation of schools in the United States in the 1860s, some 100 years before that view became the law of the United States after the US Supreme Court case of Brown v Board of Education.
• At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass was the first African American to receive a vote for the Presidency of the United States in a major party’s electoral roll call.

It is impossible to comprehend the times that Douglass lived in and the prejudice he had to endure.  It is also impossible to comprehend the courage and determination it must have taken for him to advocate the way he did for the rights of slaves, women and generally against racism.

As far as I am concerned Frederick Douglass is the greatest of the bearded blokes there has been.