Frederick Douglass Education

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an autobiography by Frederick Douglass who started as a slave and went on to be an important figure in African American history. Douglass, who as an abolitionist, played a large contribution to the emancipation as well as enduring a harsh lifestyle that most slaves went through. From figuring out how to read, he realized the realities of slavery and longed for freedom. His voice was strongly associated with America's reality of slavery and racial prejudice in the first half of the 19th century. In Frederick Douglass’s novel, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass reveals that education is the key to achieving freedom from slavery. He does …show more content…
To break slave's determination to be free, masters deprived slaves' knowledge. The strategies that slaveholders used to gain and keep power over slaves began from slaves' birth onward. Slaves were purposefully stripped of basic self-identities such as birthdays or paternity (Douglass 22). This enforced ignorance robbed children of their natural sense of individual identity and made slaves view themselves as nothing. As slave children grew older, slave owners prevented them from learning how to read and write, as literacy would give them a sense of selfsufficiency and capability. When Mr. Auld, Frederick Douglass's owner, found out that Mrs. Auld was teaching an alphbet to Douglass, he stopped her from teaching Douglass with strong objection (Douglass 52). Mr. Auld said, "A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master — to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world" (Douglass 53). Mr. Auld accidentally taught Douglass why it's so important that slaves be kept illiterate. If a slave learned to read, he would no longer be satisfied to be a slave. Having no chance to get education, slaves were denied of the opportunity to find freedom and create their own self-identification. Slaveholders only have the power to enslave people if they can keep them from getting educated. Douglass learns an important lesson here …show more content…
Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell" (Douglass 57). He implies that by his mistress teaching him the alphabet, she opened the door for him to a world of knowledge. After his master was against him learning, Douglass knew that trying to get an education on his own was not going to be easy, but he was willing to go through it undoubtedly because he knew that the reward was his freedom. His enlightenment was the slow realization to the injustices going on around him, to freedom, and to human rights. Literacy would gave him a sense of self-sufficiency and capability.(ex: Bible) The information that Douglass encounters through literacy broadens his understanding of the dehumanizing institution of slavery and the slaveholders’ strategies for promoting the ignorance of their slaves, and strengthens his desire to emancipate himself. In the end of the book, Douglass expressed the importance of education, and how it took great motivation to achieve his goal. At the end, Douglass’s hard work finally payed off, and all the pain and hard work he endured to get the skills of literacy were not wasted, and he used that to obtain his freedom. Douglass wrote, "the week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one for each which of us" (Douglass 115). This shows how he was now