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
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.