Biography of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Essay

Frederick Douglass was an African American slave reformer; he also was a writer and believed everyone should be free. Douglass once said “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” He was willing to do anything to do the right thing. In his narrative he talks about the evils of slavery and many of the strategies to keep slavery alive as well as the tactics used to keep slaves ignorant.

In 1818 Douglass was born into in slavery on a Maryland plantation in Talbot County to his mother Harriet Bailey; although he did not really know his mom till he was older she passed when he was younger. He didn‘t know his mother because the slave owners would separate them from their mothers to destroy that mother son bond; it was a tactic used to keep the slaves thought of as tools instead of people. He never knew who his father was but he suspected that he was one of the plantation owners. Most plantation owners had their way with the female slaves. It may have been a way to keep the slave population up and profits were made by selling of slaves because mixed slaves became slaves because of law. Douglass was raised by his grandmother Betty Bailey. When he was still young he was selected to work in the plantation house. Douglass was given to the wife of his master. Following his masters death he was sent to Baltimore to serve his master‘s wife‘s brother in law Hugh Auld. In Douglass ‘early child hood seemed to be rough because he did witness a lot of abuse and suffered from it as well. He recalls witnessing the brutal whipping of his grandmother but he recalls the true pain being that he couldn‘t do anything to stop it. He uses a lot of scenes like this to provide examples of the inhumanity of...

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Frederick Douglass portrayed the life of a plantation slave and also the life of slave owned in the city and gave an insight to the daily lives of slaves of the day. He opens the eyes of many people by telling his story and revealed the inhumane treatment of slaves and how they are people as well. Douglass helped lay the ground work for pursuing freedom with his pursuit of knowledge and how he broke down the tactics of slavery. He realized that knowledge was the key to freedom.

GreatestAudioBooks, . N.p.. Web. .

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.

Fort, Bruce. American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology. AS Hypertext at UVA, 6 March 1998. .