Frederick Douglass: “Slaveholders might sometimes have confidence in the piety of some of their slaves, but the slaves seldom had confidence…”

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

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.

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.