In learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the opposition of my master, as to the kindly assistance of my amiable mistress.
Frederick Douglass: “In learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the opposition of my master, as to the…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass reflects on the paradoxical role his master's opposition played in his education, alongside his mistress's initial kindness.
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I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
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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.