In learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the opposition of my master, as to the kindly assistance of my amiable mistress.
Frederick Douglass: “In learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the opposition of my master, as to the…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass reflects on the paradoxical role his master's opposition played in his education, alongside his mistress's initial kindness.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
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…