| Summary: | Frederick Douglas was born a slave, in 1818, on a plantation in Maryland. While a slave, Douglas trained himself to read as well as write. In 1845, seven years after escaping to the North, he published Narrative. This book is a reflective and vivid narrative the terrors, but more importantly, the accomplishments of his early years. In Narratives, we read about the daily, casual brutality of his white masters; his strained labors to educate himself; his choice to gain freedom or die; and finally his vexing but triumphant escape. Douglass eventually became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. Douglas, as well as the reading of this book, is essential because this man found himself an open door visitor to the Lincoln White House (1860-1865). He experienced the Civil War, the emancipation of the slaves, and the start of segregation. Douglas was the principal African American thinker of his day, and his story reverberates today. As Frederick Douglas put it, after describing the ways that the slave breaker Mr. Covey had tamed him: I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, and the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (Quoted from Davis, Inhuman Bondage 2)
|
|---|