Frederick Douglass Loss Of Education

When slavery was legal in the United States, many people did not know how cruelly the slaves were treated in the south. This changed when writers like Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, wrote about how they were treated. Frederick wrote about his time as a slave in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. [something about slave owners power] The slave owners’ methods of maintaining power over their slaves were to disgust them with freedom, the violence that they were constantly exposed to, and their lack of education. First, the slave owners maintained power over their slaves by disgusting them with freedom on the holidays. Frederick Douglass says, “Most of us used to drink it down and the result was just to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery” (77). On the holidays the slave masters would give their slaves

Douglass says, “To wit, It was a grand achievement, I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to liberty” (36). Frederick is saying education when he talks about an achievement. Slave owners would not educate their slaves because if they did, the slaves would have a much better chance of escaping from their masters. One of the ways that they would need education to escape was the passes that they could write to show to the police and other people on the road that they were being sent by their masters. The lack of education was a barrier in the way of slaves’ freedom. In conclusion, slavery was enforced by how slaves were convinces that they wouldn’t want freedom, the constant violence that they were exposed to, and their lack of education. These methods were so effective, the vast majority of slaves remained in servitude for all of their lives. Frederick Douglass helped the slaves when he published his narrative because it brought the life the horrors of slavery to the people that were living in the