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Essay On Learning To Read And Write Frederick Douglass

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Learning to Read and Write Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was born on February 1818 in Maryland. Douglas’s mother is named Harriet Bailey, and his father is an unknown white man rumored to be Douglass’s own master. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, and in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution. Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, from which “Learning …show more content…

He found his mistress stopping his every attempt to educate himself. She was initially a kind and charitable woman who went out of her way to help the needy, and who didn’t understand that she was supposed to treat slaves as mere property. She becomes more and more malicious. Sophia's efforts to stifle Douglass’s education fall short, because Douglass is determined to educate himself. Douglass has already learned the alphabet and is determined to learn how to read. He gives bread to poor local boys in exchange for reading lessons. These young boys are sympathetic to Douglass’s enslavement, and Douglass refrains from thanking them by name so as to save them the embarrassment of having aided a slave. Despite the challenges he faced, Douglas managed to get a book, The Columbian Orator and used every chance he got to read this book about slavery. After being encouraged to run away to the north for freedom, Douglass began to sit at Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard and taught himself to write. By copying the letters on the crates, Douglass learned to write and impressed many of his peers with his new talent. While both Master Hugh and Douglass' mistress was away, he read books written by Hugh and learned to write in the

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