Hartwell Alderson

Professor Harper
Frederick Douglass Narrative
09/28/14

The ability to type this paper is a gift given to me by the many teachers I have had in my
lifetime. Ever since I could walk and talk the next step for me was to read and write, and those
goals were accomplished; I was lucky. Not all children or even adults are supplied with the food
of knowledge, but their minds do not starve because the people have no idea that such a meal
exists. There was once a time in America when reading was a commodity for the white folk, but
for the people of color it was a rarity. Despite the generation gap of the present day and the
1800s, the writings of Frederick Douglass allow one to go back in time and connect the
Maryland full of slavery with the Maryland of today.
He stands tall, strong, solid, and unstoppable. His words continue to echo long after they
were spoken and he still stands with his hand held high to remind those that walk past to listen to
his everlasting sentences sent to stop slavery. He is a statue of Frederick Douglass, and he
forever stands in front of the Talbot County Court House. Monuments and statues are made in
honor of great people or those with great power, and the
juxtaposition of seeing the greatness of Fredericks adult years
in the monument alongside the readings of his troubled and
traumatizing slave life is extraordinary. Frederick describes his
first traumatic experience, his aunts whipping, The louder she
screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran

fastest, there he whipped longestHe would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. (5).
Perhaps it was the troubled life as child that molded him into the powerful man with the desire
for knowledge that he became later in life.
Education came with a price for a slave back in the 1800s as ignorance was a key factor
in keeping them obedient and submissive. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see
me with a newspaper...education and slavery were incompatible with each other (Douglass 33).
Douglass had no idea what reading would allow him to do and why his masters didnt want him
to learn. He just knew that reading would a goal that he had to achieve. Although once Douglass
was able to read and knew the seemingly inescapable situation he was in he said Learning to
read had been a curse rather than a blessingIt opened my eyes to a horrible pit, but no ladder
upon which to get out (35). In my life experience I was never told that I couldnt read, and the
children of my generation were told the opposite and were encouraged throughout our education
despite any obstacles that we came across. For Frederick he had to beat the odds and create a
clever strategy to trick the hungry, but educated white kids for reading lessons in exchange for
bread as he said As many of these [white boys] as I could, I converted into teachersThis
bread I used to bestow upon the hungry, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge
(33). In todays society reading is so common that most people refuse to read, and yet in
Frederick Douglasss time and society people would do whatever it takes to read, which I find
remarkable.
There was a time when the common knowledge and privileges of today were not so
common or non-existent, and as time passes by we forget. To truly grasp the sense of the time
and what we take for granted, one must journey back in time with a book in area where the
author truly lived. Seeing the struggle Frederick Douglass went through just learn his ABCs

makes me feel as though the present day society including myself has been given a gift and to
reject it and choose ignorance is an outrageous and awful choice. Men and women fought to
have education as a privilege in America, and everyone should take advantage of it.

References:
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: n.p., 1845.
Print.