Fredrick Douglass

Perpetua Onyekwelu

Fredrick Douglass

      Fredrick Douglass was an American slave.
A powerful black man, that was not sure of his own age. His father was an unnamed
white man. His mother, Harriet Bailey was also a slave. When Fredrick was born,
he was separated from his mother. He was raised by an old woman “too old for
field labor” (pg923). The old woman raised him with other children that are not
old enough to work in the farm. His mother Harriet work hard in the farm plantation
field, and few times, at her peril, she ventured in to the night to visit her
son. “She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked
she was gone” (pg923). Fredrick Douglass life as a slave deprived him to be
around his siblings. It caused him constant hunger, sleeping on the ground, and
bare foot, dressed in one cloth sometimes necked. He didn’t know about family affection
as a child.

              When Fredrick was around the age of
seven, he was sent to Hugh and Sophia Auld’s home in Baltimore. He was very
happy to go to the city. “Going to live in Baltimore laid the foundation, and
opened the gateway to all my subsequent prosperity” (pg936). It was in
Baltimore, under the instruction of Mrs. Auld that young Fredrick first learned
the alphabet. However it did not last long, before Mr. Auld discovered these lessons.
He strictly forbid it in words that left a profound impression on young Fredrick;
that while knowledge and learning of the world around him could bring him great
unhappiness, it could also give him great power over his enslavers who
preferred their chattel to remain ignorant and unthinking.

            Fredrick proceeding from intense and
serious state of mind plan to continue to learn to read and write on sly, aided
by the white children he met on the street and among the shipyards and docks.
At this point he knew that education will set him free and eventually education
certainly set him free.