Frederick Douglass tells about his personal story of escaping slavery. As a slave, his first hand account personalizes the stories that we hear about the traditions of how slaves were treated and their behaviors. It is remarkable that he was a slave for 20 years and escaped slavery for 9 years. He fought and worked diligently as a representative and abolitionist for the causes of slaves and against slavery and racism.
Slavery has traditionally been a practice that discriminated and enslaved Africans shipped to and sold to America, and within the states of America. Slaves had no rights and were not considered people, but treated like property, such as car, a house, or a horse. Further, it was unlawful to teach a slave how to read and write. However, Frederick Douglass learned how to read and write and in turn, taught other slaves how to read and write. The embedded experiences of lynching, being sold as property into slavery, the beatings, the rapes, the murders, the mistreatment felt and experienced by slaves, and the escape, capture and re-escape from slavery are branded in the memories of slaves. Families were separated and sold off as property. Married slaves had their marriages disregarded, and they were married to other people for the benefit of producing strong and hardworking slave children, to be later used for the cotton fields or sold off. Slavery is a subject very sensitive among the American experience, culture and for African-American families.
His ethnic history, the history of his identity and the history of his experiences as a slave, an escaped slave, a free man, a bi-racial person, and the good and bad that life offered him collectively represent Frederick Douglass. Being literate was of importance to him and this idea still resonates in the modern American society for African-Americans as it relates to their children. The ability to write provides an opportunity to make an investment into history, society and the cultural atmosphere. The privilege of knowing how to read provides power in knowing, comprehending, understanding, expressing an opinion, and fighting against injustices and suffering that could be changed. These aspects of freedom provided a way to empower other slaves, escaped slaves and free slaves. It is an amazing reality that slaves showed resistance, survived this type of mental anguish and physical abuse, had a strong faith and belief in God and passed down traditions of stories about the experiences of slavery and family.
