On the recordJanuary 1, 1855
The practice of publishing every new invention by which a slave is known to have escaped from slavery, has neither wisdom nor necessity to sustain it.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgThe practice of publishing every new invention by which a slave is known to have escaped from slavery, has neither wisdom nor necessity to sustain it.
From his autobiography, Douglass argues against publicizing the specific methods used by enslaved people to escape, deeming it counterproductive.
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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.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.