Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglas And Harriet Jacobs

FREDRICK DOUGLASS AND HARRIET JACOBS

Slavery and its long brutalizing history. Deep, bloody gashes to an inch-wide or more whip and scarred. Cold with barley enough clothes to cover them in the winter or year round. Half-fed left to starve. Rape, murder, beaten on a daily basis to death. Few who were able run away and free themselves only to live afraid as fugitive slaves out of fear someone would betray and sell them back to their slave masters. These slaves lived in barbaric ways and times. These two autobiography narratives of former slaves Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs were a few to escape and lived to tell their about their slaved lives.

Fredrick Douglass (Born as Fredrick Augustus Washington

Being born a slave into the slavery trade, he had no knowledge of his age because like his master most masters kept their slaves ignorant of their birthdate. He thought when he wrote his biography “Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass an American Slave” he was about 27/28 years of age. He was born to Harriet Bailey, a slave women. His father was a white man who he didn’t know but rumors and whispers was Fredrick Douglass master was his father. Even though Fredrick was a mulatto child he had no treatment. If the masters were caught giving the mulatto children like Fredrick any treatment or protection they would get into trouble. The masters had white wives if they suspected a mulatto child was the masters he would have to sell his child to other slave masters as these were the ways of the unjust life. When Fredrick was an infant he was forced before twelve months to be taken away from his mother’s arms. Fredrick only seen his mother 4or 5 times in his life only by night, she walked over 12 miles to lie down with him, get him to sleep before the light of day she would be gone again. She died early in his age and didn’t know of her death but for him it was like a death of a stranger. This was a common custom in Maryland