Frederick Douglass in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass circa 1847, age approximately 29 years. Source National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
“Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her among other things, that it was unlawful as well as unsafe to teach a slave to read…. ‘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.'”
“I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty –to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.”
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Yale University Press, 2001; pp. 31-32)
Frederick Douglass successfully escaped slavery on September 3, 1838.
Learn more about Douglass at the Frederick Douglass National Historic site (National Park Service).
Douglass’s life is also discussed in Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, and In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (available 9/20).
In the Shadow of Liberty (Available for pre-order and in stores on 9/20)
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)
