Learning To Read And Write Frederick Douglass Analysis

Thesis: Frederick Douglass gained success throughout his years by emphasizing the role of education and how it changed him from slavery to freedom. In my research paper i will be aiming to discuss how education can affect an individual slave and how it plays a big role in the life of one person, and how the whites in America feared if a slave received any kind of education because it would threaten their authority. However there will be a discussion why slavery should be abolished and why education is important to every human being.

In multiple letters and notes he wrote he expressed his guilt for the slaves and once the slaves paid off their debt and Jefferson’s he hoped to free them. Jefferson and his slaves remained in debt until the day he died. Jefferson believed that slavery not only deprived blacks of their liberty but had an “unhappy” influence on the masters and their children (Takaki 63). If a master is constantly punishing a slave and cannot restrain, the child’s master will imitate and master it, resulting in a nonstop cycle of slavery.

In the book, Douglass illustrates how literacy is a key component of revising a slave from the mental bonds of story. Chapter six, when Hugh Auld forbids Sophia Auld to stop giving Douglass writing and reading lessons is when Douglass learns that knowledge must be the way to freedom, while Auld believe education will ruin slaves. Without knowing it Aulds revealed a way for slaves to be free on how which whites manage to keep blacks as slaves so they can’t free themselves. Hugh didn 't want Douglass to be educated because he thought Douglass would become unmanageable and unfit to become a slave if he enters the world of literacy. What would happen if slaves are revealed to education?

As non-whites in America, they were met with greater discrimination as the representatives of their races. Frederick Douglass was able to escape slavery and prove equality with whites. When he was first forbidden to learn to read, he overheard his master telling his wife that: If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.

The black folk were freed by the abolition of slavery, yet this new freedom was not so. Ther identity was forever fractured between black and American, and even after they internalized the whites’ perspectives of them, they still wanted to be both without the disadvantages and racism. They were degraded, dehumanize, and shamed for their lack of education and job skills. In 1865, the Freemen’s Bureau was established by Congress to provide them with aid after living in slavery and not owning tools, homes, or land.

The desire to learn generates determination and motivation. While still a young slave, Douglass’s master forbids his wife from continuing to teach Douglass the alphabet because it did not align with the common worldview that educated slaves had no value to their masters. Douglass never understood the power of a white man to enslave and demean a black man. However, his master’s passionate claim initiated his pursuit towards freedom as he recalls, “From that

Human slavery requires ignorance, just as an individual’s freedom, from oppression, requires knowledge attained by education. To maintain order and control over slaves, slavery demands ignorant slaves; thus, keeping slaves ignorant prevents slaves from recognizing the empowering value of education and education’s ability to liberate slaves from the effects of ignorance. Frederick Douglass’s pursuit of education helped him discover the dark, hidden truths of slavery in his article, “How I Learned to Read and Write.” Thus, the pursuit of education inspires a desire for freedom. The desire to learn generates determination and motivation.

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln wanted to colonize blacks in the Southwest United States. England and France being close to joining the Confederacy and Northern casualties forced Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was not happy that he had to do this saying he had “been anxious to avoid it”, that he was “driven to it”, that it was painful, and he was trembling while signing the document. The Emancipation Proclamation freed few slaves since it did not apply to slaves in the Border States and areas under federal control in the South. Lincoln freed slaves where he had no power and did nothing where he had power.

Reading books taught him that slavery was something to be condemned and that human rights very much existed for everyone, not only for the white man. Being an educated black man, he broke the expectation of blacks being inferior, and having his mind opened up to the new world, his life was changed from being a slave to a leader in the abolitionist movement, fighting to free the other slaves so that they could also experience the same fate-changing event as he

Clearly from the image described, those two groups didn’t see blacks as their equals and despised them. Their purpose in creating this image was to install fear in blacks to keep them from voting and believing that they are equal to those in the ex-confederacy. The kkk had been using terror tactics all throughout the Reconstruction era because they didn’t want blacks to vote or participate in their politics the kkk wanted to keep white supremacy. For a while the South had enacted black codes which replaced the slave codes. The black codes restricted the freedom of African Americans, but eventually the federal government ruled black codes unconstitutional.

Johnsons also alienated and tried to stand against the Republicans in early 1866 when he vetoed a bill increasing the service and protection offered by the Freedmen’s Bureau and a civil rights bill that invalidated the Black codes.(Doc 2). This cause many problems with the “Radical Republicans”,who was looking for civil rights for African-Americans people in

The Reconstruction period, one of the most controversial periods in American history, During the Reconstruction majority of the blacks were defenseless given the new state constitutions were incorporated by different challenges such as prejudiced literacy tests and poll taxes. At the end of the Civil War, the South beaten and there land destroyed, the destruction was tremendous, and the old social and economic order that was established on slavery depleted completely. The Confederate states had to be reformed to their positions in the Union. The free slaves in the south had to be well-defined.

Slaves were forbidden to learn how to read and write because slave owners wanted to keep slaves ignorant and dependent upon them. Likewise slave owners thought that educating the slaves would harm the system of slavery. For instance laws were created in several states illegally forbidding slaves to learn to read and write. I believe slave owners took such a hard stance on educating slave because they felt that slaves would start to want more (i.e. freedom) and that education of slaves would be what ended slavery.

On the other hand the North thought that the blacks were unfit for politics and that they need to forget about the conditions of how slavery was. “The blacks, as a people, are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties… The rising generation of… blacks needed a period of probation and instruction; a period… long enough for the black to have forgotten something of his condition as a slave and learned much of the true method of gaining honorable subsistence and of performing the duties of any position to which he might aspire.” The North thinks that the blacks are unfit for politics but in the South the blacks are being held at gunpoint. The Reconstruction was about helping blacks not killing

Because of the statuses of each person who attends Douglass’ school, they have a common ground to discuss with each other. Although Douglass is not technically a slave like most of the others learning from him, he still is in the lowest social tier and African American. Because of their corresponding similarities, the slaves and Douglass bond over their hardships while understanding what the others are going through. It is easy to sympathize with each other because they are in the same situation. During the time period this was written, society purposely made African American slaves feel like they didn’t belong and like they were outcasts.