...The Power of Knowledge Frederick Douglass addresses in his autobiography the cruelty and the barbarity of slavery The Narrative life of Frederick Douglass and his speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro.” He emphasizes this by using education as the key to the path of freedom. Knowledge has liberated those who have been oppressed by slavery. Nelson Mandela, a famous civil rights activist and the first South African president, once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world.” (Mandela, 1993). Both were subjugated by societies filled with abusive racism. Douglass used education as a weapon to guide him to his independence. Through knowledge, Douglass ascended to be as educated as a white man. By insisting on his credibility, appealing to his readers’ emotions, and making logical arguments against his oppressor, Douglass communicates that literacy is a tool used to overcome the oppression of slavery. This is significant because literacy broadened the perspective of slaves, which enabled them to prevail against inhumane conditions. As a former slave, Douglass emphasizes reliability by talking about his experience as a slave to show how slaveholders would prevent them from knowledge. He realized his life had been molded into an abrupt distorted lie created by the most wicked of men by stating, “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about...
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...Frederick Douglass, his Pursuit of Freedom, and the Abomination of American Slavery Frederick Douglass's autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), reveals a multitude of ways in which African Americans suffered under slavery. The Narrative captures the universality of slavery and its many abuses such as the separation of family and friends, daily beatings, backbreaking labor, scarcity of sleep, suppression of individuality, crushing oppression, and intense racism. The turning point in Douglass’s slavery is his stay with slaveholder Covey. The fight with Covey forms the central moment of the text where he is able to symbolically break free from bondage and become an autonomous human being thus enabling his later escape....
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...Although Frederick Douglass wrote several autobiographies during his lifetime, none continues to have the lasting literary impact of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. From its publication in 1845 to its present status in the American literary canon, the Narrative has become one of the most highly acclaimed American autobiographies ever written. Published seven years after Douglass' escape from his life as a slave in Maryland, the Narrative put into print circulation a critique of slavery that Douglass had been lecturing on around the country for many years. Yet while the Narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of being a slave, it also reveals his psychological insights into the slave/master relationship. What Douglass realizes that day is that literacy is equated with not only individual consciousness but also freedom. From that day, Douglass makes it his goal to learn as much as he can, eventually learning how to write, a skill that would provide him with his passport to freedom. What gives the book its complexity is Douglass' ability to incorporate a number of sophisticated literary devices...
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...and Frederick Douglass were both incredibly intelligent men, and without them, the Civil Rights Movement would not have been nearly as successful. The two men were so significant not only because of their participation in the movement, but also their influence in many other activists for centuries to come. Both of these incredible human beings had to teach themselves how to read, and without doing so, they would not have made such an impact on the world. Malcolm X said that reading evoked a desire to be “mentally alive” (Malcolm X, 1925) in him, while Douglass viewed reading as a means to escape “mental darkness”. (Douglass) Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were affected greatly by the power of reading, and it is important to note exactly how it impacted their lives, what prompted their decision to learn to read, the parallels between the ways they both learned to read, the knowledge they both gained through literacy, and what they both discovered about “the curse and not the blessing” of literacy. First off, it is safe to say that Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were not simply impacted by their opportunities to teach themselves how to read, rather, their entire lives were...
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...Human Rights: A Paine in My….Douglass? According to Frederick Douglass, a nineteenth-century northern slave, “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” Thomas Paine, a rebellious eighteenth-century Englishman, finishes and furthermore expands this thought, saying that “those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” While both of these men grew up in separate worlds, miles and years apart, their idealisms and life missions are very much alike. This is evident through the investigation of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Frederick Douglass is the...
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...Frederick Douglass was a slave in America until the age of 20. He wrote three of the most highly regarded autobiographies of the 19th century, while he only began learning to read and write when he turned 12 years old. After an early life of hardship and pain, Douglass escaped to the North to write three autobiographies, which spaced along decades. He wrote about his life as a slave and a freeman. The institution of slavery scarred him so intensely that he decided to devote his powers of speech and prose to fighting it. Douglass wrote three biographies about his life as a politician, slave, and abolitionist. However, the historical value of these works does not remain as important as the quality of the works themselves. Frederick Douglass’ writing deserves recognition in the canon of great American authors, because his work meets the chosen criteria for inclusion in a collection of important literature. Douglass influenced many famous abolitionists with his literary works, and this impact, coupled with his desire to write an expose about oppression in America, makes him a winning candidate. Although his published works, mostly autobiographies, received much acclaim from abolitionists, this paper explores the quality of Douglass’s work from a literary standpoint. To fully appreciate the impact of Douglass’s autobiographies, we must examine violent period in which he lived. Douglass, born in 1818, grew up as a slave on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation in eastern Maryland. At the time...
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...show that they are a part of the black community. This would show that they know what they are talking about because they have experienced firsthand the oppressions...
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...getting the fight for independence and freedom started. He was strong in believing that people’s rights should be protected and that people should not be oppressed. Henry was able to recognize that Britain was an oppressing force....
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...Chapter 9 The Market Revolution 51. Complaint of a Lowell Factory Worker 1. The female factory worker compared her conditions with those of slaves because she felt like they were being treated like slaves by not being allowed to speak for themselves. She felt that they were awed into silence by wealth and power and was under tyranny and cruel oppression 2. She doubt the sincerity of the Christian beliefs of the factory owners because they talk benevolence in the parlor, compel their help to labor for a mean and paltry pittance in the kitchen. They manifest great concern for souls of the heathen in distant lands and care for nobody else besides their own. 52. Immigrants Arriving in New York City 1. The tone the reporter adopted regarding the immigrants is hostile because of how he describes the immigrants and how they looked. He described them having degraded faces with many stamps of inferiority. 2. The aspirations the reporter thinks are uppermost in the immigrant’s minds is hope, freedom, and a chance to work, and food to the laboring man. 53. A Woman in the Westward Movement 1. Moving west altered tradition expectations of women’s roles by proving that they could endure rough conditions from moving west. They were left to be lonely and the burdens of pioneer life. 2. Mrs. Noble’s main complaints about her situation on the frontier was carrying her infants and not being able to sleep because of thinking about wild beasts. She...
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...two important historical articles; Fredrick Douglass “What to the slave is the fourth of July” and David Walker’s “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World”. The essay will attempt to discuss the very famous speech Fredrick Douglas made in 1952 as well as David’s Walker’s appeal while comparing and contrasting both the appeal and the speech. Afterward, a summary will be given and a conclusion will be drawn. As we look throughout history, one would argue that we couldn’t find a more appalling and unjust act as that of slavery. Slavery played a major role of not only history but of an innumerable amount of American people. In David Walker’s appeal and Fredrick Douglass what to the slave is the fourth of July, men and women of African American descent struggle with the reality of slavery and the cruel results and affect it had on people like themselves. Fredrick Douglas was one of the most influential African Americans of his day, in spite of his inauspicious beginning, he was born into slavery on a plantation in Maryland where he was called Fredrick Augustus Washington Bailey. Douglas always suspected that his father was his mother’s white owner, Captain Aaron Anthony. He spent his early childhood in privation on the plantation then he was sent to work as a house slave for the auld family in Baltimore. There, he came in contact with printed literature and quickly realized the relationship between literacy and personal freedom. With help from Mrs. Auld, Douglas learned how...
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...November 28, 2011 The Surmount of Oppression In the reading of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave the author, Frederick Douglass, gave many examples of the institution of slavery and the hardships that the slaves suffered. There were different types of hardships that slaves had to go through each day. Frederick Douglass explains many of his and those of others around him experiences within the institution of slavery. Many were physical but the ones that held on to a person were the emotional hardships. Douglass encountered many hardships not only that he had to get through, but that of others who were oppressed, and had to overcome that tribulation. An example of that is when Douglass witnessed his Aunt Hester being punished by Mr. Plummer who was the overseer. Douglass states “He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, ‘Now, you d----d b----h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!’ and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over” (Douglass 45-46). Hardships were very common...
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...Jordan Augustus 11/10/12 US AP History Slave Agency versus Oppression “Dehumanization is a physiological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral considerations" (Michelle Maise) In my perspective, I believe everyone can agree that slavery was utterly dehumanizing. Kids at the age of 12 and younger were slaves and even born into slavery; families were constantly separated, and slaves would get beaten brutally without any mercy. Fredrick Douglass, the poem “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Sarah Fitzpatrick’s statement, and an autobiography by Josiah Henson; illustrate the harsh treatment and dehumanization that slaves went through and endured for many years. Slaves hoped and attempted to maintain slave culture, when going into slavery. It was often attempted to stop slave culture that originated from Africa, because whites believed that it would one day cause and uprising, and rebellion against slavery. “While on their way (to work), the slaves would make a dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.” (Douglass Doc 2) This quote by Frederick Douglass illustrates their journey to work was one of their only breaks and release from slavery. Furthermore during their trip to work, singing and listening to music gave them a sensation of relaxation; like medicine to a sick patient, it helped them forget about the miseries and dehumanization...
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...Appeal in the Narrative of Frederick Douglass In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass adopts a critical tone as he openly discusses his journey to freedom in an attempt to deconstruct the positive view of slavery through the realities he experiences as a slave. Douglass, an educated slave, wrote the memoir after escaping to freedom as a means of informing the public about slavery as an abolitionist. Douglass utilizes emotional by detailing events that occurred during his time as a slave in order to evoke pity, anger, and fear in order to compel his audiences to regard the institution of slavery as deplorable. Douglass tends to highlight instances in which slave’s personal relationships are destroyed in order...
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...I’ve learned more through the class of “Black World Studies” taught by Professor Coates. Coates gave me the intelligent insight on how Africans-Americans were able to succeed through the tough times of learning even when they could die from learning how to read. It was a sacrifice the slaves had to do that the time. When I read more articles and watched more movies, it showed determination, courage, heart, and attitude. When reading, it switched to a period of slavery to a period of the Civil War. After that I came to an author named Jared Diamond that gave his view on the world of slavery. In the article “How Africa Became Black” by Jared Diamond he argues that diversity resulted from the geography of Africa. Africa is home to five major human groups, blacks, whites, African Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. Thirty percent of the world’s language is in Africa. But as the years goes on were losing about 2 per week. Soon as the world gets older there wouldn’t be any languages in Africa. As race continues to grow in Africa there will be different types of languages being made and the previous groups (ethnic groups of language) wouldn’t exist anymore. As said in paragraph 8 of “How Africa Became Black” races are stereotyping, from Black to White, to putting the Zulu, Masai, and Ibo into a black category and Africa's Egyptians and Berbers with each other and with Europe's Swedes with the whites. The question that pertains to this is why are people being judgmental of other races and confusing...
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...A Virginia cavalry officer declares the Yankees as, “a nation of thieves and robbers,” and that he is, “more willing to kill as many of them as God in his providence will permit me.” (22) In the beginning, as stated by a young Virginian officer, “the Confederacy would win this ‘second War for American Independence’,” (9) giving mixed feelings about how he was so confident in the Confederacy’s ensured victory in the dispute of slavery, yet how the natural order of a nation is that, “Tyranny cannot prosper in the nineteenth century [against] a people fighting for their liberties.” (9) Seeing this duality of opinion, Northern comradery and sense of natural rights and freedom from oppression gives aid to the battles to come. As stated by a Georgia captain in the Army of Northern Virginia, “We must put forth even greater energy… our forefathers were whipped in nearly every battle & yet after seven years of trials and hardships achieved their independence.”...
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