Douglass’s Walk Down Literacy Road to Freedom
Douglass’s Walk Down Literacy Road to Freedom
What would it be like if you did not know how to read or write in today’s world? You would be looked down upon, tormented, treated as if you were far less than the peers around you that know how to read. In the days of slavery, the slaves were illiterate and the slave owners wanted to keep it that way. In Frederick Douglass’ autobiographical slave narrative the “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” Douglass explains that knowledge was the best next thing to freedom and that he, as well as the slave owners, saw that. To Douglass, literacy was freedom or means to gain freedom; yet for the slave owners also saw that keeping the slaves illiterate kept them manageable. I believe that in any instance, in any given period of history, education and the ability to read and write gives a person social freedom, meaning the ability to communicate in a more understanding way.
Slave owners believed that keeping slaves in order was not only the pending threat of harsh physical punishment; yet, also though sustained ignorance. Since the slaves kept from learning how to read and write, they were unaware of any events outside their plantation. This made it almost impossible for the slaves to communicate with each other well enough to organize an escape plan or provoke rebellion. Thus literacy and education was believed to bring the understanding of the larger world, life outside the plantation and freedom from harsh, unrewarded labor. When Sophia Auld was discovered giving lessons to Douglass by her husband, she was ordered to stop. Her husband explained that, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master---to as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no
What would it be like if you did not know how to read or write in today’s world? You would be looked down upon, tormented, treated as if you were far less than the peers around you that know how to read. In the days of slavery, the slaves were illiterate and the slave owners wanted to keep it that way. In Frederick Douglass’ autobiographical slave narrative the “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” Douglass explains that knowledge was the best next thing to freedom and that he, as well as the slave owners, saw that. To Douglass, literacy was freedom or means to gain freedom; yet for the slave owners also saw that keeping the slaves illiterate kept them manageable. I believe that in any instance, in any given period of history, education and the ability to read and write gives a person social freedom, meaning the ability to communicate in a more understanding way.
Slave owners believed that keeping slaves in order was not only the pending threat of harsh physical punishment; yet, also though sustained ignorance. Since the slaves kept from learning how to read and write, they were unaware of any events outside their plantation. This made it almost impossible for the slaves to communicate with each other well enough to organize an escape plan or provoke rebellion. Thus literacy and education was believed to bring the understanding of the larger world, life outside the plantation and freedom from harsh, unrewarded labor. When Sophia Auld was discovered giving lessons to Douglass by her husband, she was ordered to stop. Her husband explained that, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master---to as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no