Before Frederick Douglass became the esteemed, well, Frederick Douglass, he was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a house slave from Maryland, where he grew up under the house of Hugh Auld and escaped to the north at an early age. Frederick Douglass was one of the thousands of slaves owned by wealthy slave owners that brutally supported their oppression and captivity, but was one among very few to live to speak about his experience in the political forefront of the United States.
Long before the rise of Martin Luther King Jr and the climax of the civil rights movement, Frederick Douglass, an African-American social reformer and abolitionist, helped pave the way for thousands of slaves to fundamental rights of freedom and equal opportunities in the United States. As a former slave, Frederick lived a challenging life before gaining prominence and contributing to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation with Abraham Lincoln; as a slave, he independently learned to read and write - something that was strictly forbidden at that time. Especially in southern states like
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In his autobiography, “ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” he writes about the hundreds of slaves that have grown completely submissive under the rule of their owner, Captain Anthony; to them, escape from the tendrils of captivity was an impossible idea rooted in decades of learned helplessness: “I have often been utterly astonished, since I came [to visit the slaves], to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears….. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of