Examples Of Dehumanization In Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Destined to Escape the Menacing Effects of Slavery and Humanize Himself in the Eyes of White Culture
Frederick Douglass, a former slave and human rights leader in the abolition movement, was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland in 1818. He spent the first seven years of his life living with his maternal grandmother in a plantation owned by Colonel Edward Lloyd in Talbot County. He was eventually sold to a man named Hugh Auld and sent to live in Baltimore. It was here that Douglass first acquired the skills that would vault him to national prominence as one of the most sought after anti-slavery speakers of the nineteenth century. Defying tremendous odds, Douglass secretly taught himself to read and write.

From the time a slave was born, the act of dehumanization began. Before a slave reached the age of one, slaveholders would separate the mother from the child in order to "hinder the development of the child's affection towards its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child”. As with most slaves, Douglass’s mother, Bailey, was an intermittent presence in his life. He recounts how she had been sold to a man who lived twelve miles from his plantation, which in turn prevented the cultivation of one of the most fundamental human relationships: the bond between mother and child. Douglass’s relationship with his mother was characterized by a lack of emotion on his part owing to their brief time together before her death. He only saw her four or five times and it was always at night; Bailey made her journeys to see him, traveling the whole distance on foot after a long day’s

Female slaves were valued for their physical characteristics as well as for their likelihood to produce strong, healthy children who would grow up and tread in their mother’s footsteps. In the same way as livestock, fertile slaves were sold at higher prices. Douglass does a superb job of giving the reader examples of how the inhumane process of breeding took place. His depictions are graphic but are necessary to explain one of the most morally outrageous practices of slavery. Douglass