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Frederick Douglass 'Liberating Ignorance'

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Liberating Ignorance
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey also known as Frederick Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland during slavery. He was immediately removed from his mother, this was very common during slavery, and was raised by the grandmother of all slave babies. At the age of eight he was sent off to his first masters house where he heard rumors his master was his father. Through the slavery days, slave owners often raped and impregnated their female slaves and profited with the extra free slave labor. This tended to assure continuance in suffrage as a slave. The slaveholder’s wife would feel insulted with their presence and were mistreated and continually sold the mixed raced slaves. During his stay with his master Captain Anthony …show more content…

Frederick Douglass understood that people are created equal. Education and self-improvement were extremely important to him, we weren't just born free: we have to make ourselves into who we are. The worst thing about slavery, to his mind, is that it prevents people from improving themselves through education (Shmoop Editorial Team). As Mr. Douglass grew into the slave life he questioned multiple things of his life. He wanted to know why he was deprived from knowing his age while other white boys knew their age. Slaves did not have birth certificates. Slaveholders use this tactic to gain power over the slaves. Slaves did not have the knowledge to defend themselves. Slaveholders knew that by keeping slaves ignorant they would not question the right as an African-American slave to the whites. “ A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master- to do as he is told… if you teach that nigger how to read there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave” (Douglass 20). Without knowing Mr. Douglass’s master reveled to him the path to freedom. The southerners need every hand they can get for labor if it’s free the better. As previously mentioned slaveholders kept their slaves uneducated because they weren’t able to rebel or do better. Having an educated slave made then fit for higher non-labor

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In Frederick Douglass’s essay “Learning to Read and Write,” he uses his essay to get the point across by being educated in reading, he learns he is a “slave for life.” By that saying he realizes that if he ever becomes free from slavery, he will never be free in a state of mind. He is always going to be a slave, weather it would be master huge, or learning. So learning to read and understand the meaning of words he sees his problem of being able to read and have the ability to understand what happening around him; through “The Colombian Orator.” And after reading and understanding, no man should be a slave.

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He understood the need for everyone to be equal and that race or gender didn't matter. The determination that Frederick showed while learning and never giving up on it, as well as being courageous in fighting for African American and women's rights led him to do things most African Americans couldn't do. Early life Douglass was born in Talbot County, Maryland

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Education could help slaves to learn information about the North and to help them get a job in the North, though most worked in factories which required very little education. Douglass first began his education when Mrs. Auld, one of his mistresses, started to teach him to read and write, but the lessons were short lived as Mr. Auld stopped his wife saying, as Douglass (1845/1995) stated, “If you teach that nigger how to read, there will be no keeping him” (p. 20). Misses Auld ended

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Douglass’s Narrative writings show us that the masters ignore their slaves, and keep them ignorant and uneducated. They wanted their slaves to know that the slaves were born as slaves, and there was no way out to get rid of being a slave. The masters of the slaves wanted their slaves to accept and know that slavery was natural. The slaveholders did not want their slaves to write and read because if they knew to write and read, the slavery might have been ended after a while. Another point was to control over the slaves by leaving them ignorant.

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They were treated as farm animals and possessions, who had no rights or privileges. Examples given by him were, that men, women, old and young, were all ranked with livestock and examined in the same manner. He talks about many incidents where he shows how whites did not consider slaves as actually human. One of the examples are, Douglass mentioning that him and other slaves were not aware of their birthdays. This was one of the reasons of his discontent during childhood, where he didn’t have the information regarding his birth date or age but the white children did.

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When Mr. Auld warned Mrs. Auld of the dangers that would come about with an intelligent slave, Douglass recognized the path from slavery to freedom. “It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to whit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.

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Overall Douglass was trying to teach future generations, while also making a statement to the masters that slaves were more than just brainless workers, but could be just as smart or smarter than

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It would forever unfit him to be a slave.” (48). After hearing a demoralizing quote like this, most enslaved people would be upset. They might take his words and see their chance at an education disappear, but Douglass looked at this statement another way. He came to the realization that masters believed that knowledge would give any enslaved person the chance to become intellectually free.

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Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was a prominent abolitionist, orator, author, and a national leader. Born a slave, Douglass went on to become an anti-slavery activist during the abolitionist movement in the 1840s. Through Douglass’s autobiographies and other works of literature, the social injustices and the realistic views of slavery was brought to America’s

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The legendary abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass was one of the most important social reformers of the nineteenth century. Being born into slavery on a Maryland Eastern Shore plantation to his mother, Harriet Bailey, and a white man, most likely Douglass’s first master was the starting point of his rise against the enslavement of African-Americans. Nearly 200 years after Douglass’s birth and 122 years after his death, The social activist’s name and accomplishments continue to inspire the progression of African-American youth in modern society. Through his ability to overcome obstacles, his strive for a better life through education, and his success despite humble beginnings, Frederick Douglass’s aspirations stretched his influence through

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Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.” In the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Douglass emphasizes on how masters seek to deprive their slaves of knowledge, in order to make it so that slaves cannot comprehend what it is to be free. Hugh Auld, one of Douglass’s old masters stop his wife from teaching Douglass to read and write, saying “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world… if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master.” (960) Douglass along with other slaves weren’t given the opportunity to be educated, so his goal was to be educated and to see all the opportunities he can have.

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The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slave the double relation of master and father” (947). “Douglass ' Narrative begins with a few facts about his birth and his parentage. Douglass father is a slave owner and his mother is a slave named Harriet Bailey. When Douglass

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In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass illustrates the harshness of slavery, the power of education/knowledge, and that slavery is detrimental to all those involved. On several occasions, Douglass illustrates the desire of the white man to keep slave “ignorant” (Douglass, 2012). Not allowing slaves to learn to read or write, publicly and cruelly punishing anyone that did. Not even allowing them the simple of their own birthday. To ever teach slave would ensure “the freedom of the slaves and the enslavement of the whites” (Douglass, 2012).

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With all the knowledge he was gaining, he began to comprehend everything around him. The things he was learning fascinated him, but the “more [he] read, the more [he] was led to abhor and detest [his] enslavers”(Douglass 35); however, that should not be viewed as a negative affect but a positive one. No one should want to be deceived for their entire life. This hatred that he built up motivated him to continue to further educate himself. As a result, he later motivated other slaves to earn an education by having “[availed] themselves to [an] opportunity to learn to read” (Douglass 69) by Douglass teaching them every Sunday.

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Human slavery requires ignorance, just as an individual’s freedom, from oppression, requires knowledge attained by education. To maintain order and control over slaves, slavery demands ignorant slaves; thus, keeping slaves ignorant prevents slaves from recognizing the empowering value of education and education’s ability to liberate slaves from the effects of ignorance. Frederick Douglass’s pursuit of education helped him discover the dark, hidden truths of slavery in his article, “How I Learned to Read and Write.” Thus, the pursuit of education inspires a desire for freedom. The desire to learn generates determination and motivation.

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