Frederick Douglass is a former slave, writer, and abolitionist. Douglass uses his writing as a way to convince white Americans to abolish slavery, One of his writing’s is in the form of a book called The Narrative of Fredrick Douglass where he talks about his experience living as a slave and how it affected him and the slaves around him. Douglass narrative serves as an indictment of the institution of slavery by showing how slavery dehumanizes slaves, how slavery is racist and shows the sexual abuse faced by the slaves. To begin with, Douglass’ narrative shows the way slavery dehumanizes the slave’s. Douglass goes into detail on how he was ranked among different slaves and animals. In the text he says “Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with …show more content…
Covey forced a female slave to have sex with another slave for the sole purpose of getting more slaves to add to his wealth. This example shows that slave owners would go out of their way to force slaves into intimacy and force them into adultery. In the beginning of the narrative Douglass explains to his audience how his father was an unknown white man suspected to be his master, the fact that his father was unknown may hint to his mother being sexually abused. The main reason for saying this is because of a law “that the children of a slave woman shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers”. I believe this law was put in place to administer to their lusts, and make gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable. In conclusion, the institution of slavery directly and indirectly dehumanizes slaves, by use of propaganda that causes bigotry by the black Americans that still effects many black Americans to this day while also causing slaves to face sexual abuse by their