Frederick Douglas was a prominent abolitionist and former slave. He wrote about his time as a slave and in the except Learning to Read where he tells the reader about his experience on learning to read and the beginning of gaining his freedom. It begins with Douglas as a child in the house of his slave master. He lives with Master Hugh’s family for about seven years during this time he took a risk and learned to read. An opportunity very few in his place had. This was because or the kindness of Hugh’s wife. She taught him the alphabet the infrastructure of reading. In the beginning, she treated him like a human and not as if he was some brutish animal. According to Douglas, she did not understand her kindness was dangerous. This kindness did not last for long. She soon began to lose all her virtues to the realities of slavery, the institution has changed her heart and forced her to evolve into something she was not originally. The kind woman who taught a slave boy the …show more content…
He concocted a plan that would allow him to learn to read without letting his masters know. He would take bread out with him on errands in town and trade it for reading lessons with little poor white boys. This is how he learned to read. Through this, he became more aware of the idea of what he was. Douglas would read “The Columbian Orator” where a slave who had run away three times talked his way into emancipation. Douglas spoke with a well-known Irish playwright Sheridan on the matters of slavery, Sheridan stood for human rights and stood against slavery. Reading had led Douglas to knowledge, and knowledge had led Douglas to abhor his slave masters. He concluded that the masters were thieves that had stolen his people from their homes in Africa. He had become what his master has feared a person who wanted his freedom. Douglas soon became eager to hear about the abolitionists. Learning from the newspaper what the term referred