On the recordJanuary 1, 1845
In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgFrederick Douglass: “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass confesses that in his deepest anguish, he sometimes wished for the ignorance of his fellow enslaved people to escape his torment.
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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.
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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.