Frederick Douglass
(source)
Excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ autobiography (abbreviated):
[Mr. Hugh Auld, Douglass' slave master] said that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy”…
I know understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom [i.e. education, FS] …
Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost or trouble, to learn how to read…
The more I read [about slavery], the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. … As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I withered under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. … In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. … It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. … Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.
More on slavery. Another excerpt from the same work is here.
