When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to read, every increase of knowledge, especially respecting the FREE STATES, added something to the almost intolerable burden of the thought—I AM A SLAVE FOR LIFE.
In his autobiography, Douglass describes how gaining literacy intensified his awareness of his enslaved condition and the injustice of it.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.