"Knowledge-Freedom"

Who was Frederick Douglass? Frederick Douglass was a black slave who wanted to be free. Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Talbot County, in Maryland, around 1818. The exact year of his birth is unknown. Frederick Douglass had a mother and father, his mother he knew, but always informed by the other slaves on the plantation, his father was his owner. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, Frederick Douglass believed if he could procure knowledge, he will have power, and gain “Freedom”.

When Frederick Douglass was young he became curious about his life as a slave. He realizes the surrounding on the plantation was not natural, whites controlling blacks with knowledge, power, and whips.  As a child, Frederick Douglass has seen a thing that terrifies him like watching an overseer beat his Aunt Hester for disobeying his instruction. The overseer beat her until her red kool-aid (blood) started dripping on the floor, Douglass replies, “I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, and that I hid myself in a closet” (Douglass 239). This will ruin anyone childhood. Something happen that brought grace to Frederick Douglass. His owner, son, wife begins to teach him how to read, when her husband finds out he replies, “it is unlawful and unsafe to teach a slave to read; now he will be no keeping, and forever unfit to be a slave” (Douglass 250). Frederick Douglass knew then knowledge is very important, from here on, he begins to educate himself with the other whites he come in contact with, which gave him a sense of power. Frederick Douglass continues to go on and become an abolitionist leader for slavery and one of the most prominent black authors in history. He also gains the most important purpose in his life, to be “Free” as a black man.