On the recordJanuary 1, 1881
That a field-hand should learn to read in any slave State is remarkable, but the achievements of my mother, considering the place and circumstances, was very extraordinary.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgFrederick Douglass: “That a field-hand should learn to read in any slave State is remarkable, but the achievements of my mother, considering…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass marvels at his mother's extraordinary achievement of learning to read despite the severe restrictions placed on enslaved people.
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We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
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The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.