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Caitlin's Praxis Journal

Frederick Douglass Before 1855

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Praxis Journal Entry 2 -- 9/5/16 5 Frederick Douglass -- Literacy as Rebellion plain 2016-10-22T18:47:16-07:00
Frederick Douglass rebelled in numerous ways while a slave and after his escape. These include:
- Learning to read and write
- Teaching other slaves to read and write
- Holding Sunday school
- Standing up to Covey, the "slave breaker"
- Escaping slavery
- Speaking at anti-slavery conventions, even though it was very risky for him
- Publishing a memoir
- (And then publishing two more memoirs)
- Making great speeches like "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
- Advocating women's rights
- Founds The North Star -- a major anti-slavery publication
- Marrying, having children, and creating his own family, home, and happiness
- Many others
One theme returns several times on this list: literacy. Reading and writing were forbidden to most slaves, sometimes with severe consequences for slave caught learning to read and write. When Hugh Auld learns that Douglass is becoming literate, he forbids him to learn to read and write because he believes this can make him more rebellious. But Douglass insists on learning anyways, and then he teaches other slaves to read and write. Later, he not only tells his story to audiences but writes down his autobiography (which is quite dangerous), starts an anti-slavery newspaper, and writes and publishes stories, speeches, and two more autobiographies over his lifetime. The capacity to read and write turns out to be a crucial part of Douglass's rejection of and rebellion against slavery.

Use the section below to write your second Praxis Journal Entry. In class on Wednesday, September 7, you will choose 2 passages in from our Douglass readings that talk about literacy and its importance (one from the Narrative and one from the readings for September 7). In your first entry, below, you will write about how these passages express the importance of literacy. See if you can tie the idea of literacy specifically to resistance to slavery, or to insisting on his humanity as a slave. The more detail you can use, the better!

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“Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read…I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, p.48)

“At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage…Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear sisters are. Have you sold them? Or are they still in your possession? What has become of them? Are they living or dead…let me know all about them. I would write to them, and learn all I want to know of them, without disturbing you in any way, but that, through your unrighteous conduct, have been entirely deprived of the power to read and write. You have kept them in utter ignorance, and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments of writing or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives. Your wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your fellow-creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back or theirs” (“Letter to His Old Master”, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader p.107)

The first passage most plainly expresses the importance of literacy to Douglass. Even as a child Douglass was aware of his enslavement, but he was never able to understand how it was that white people were able to hold black people in bondage. Mr. Auld’s negative reaction to his wife teaching Douglass to read answered that question. The white man kept the black man in bondage by keeping him ignorant: ignorant of his history, his capabilities, his own worth as a human being. An ignorant slave was a pliable slave. Douglass realized then that literacy was the key to his physical and mental freedom. Literacy could aid in his escape (ability to read maps and signs, forge papers, etc.) and would be a great advantage in creating a new life as a free man. More importantly, literacy Douglass learning to read and write proved that he was not a dumb, brutish animal but a person with every right and freedom that entailed. Of all the forms of slave resistance Douglass mentioned in his Narrative, he gave education the greatest importance because he understood its power.

Douglass’ support of literacy as a resistance to slavery is further highlighted in the second passage, where he calls Mr. Auld’s denial of education to his sisters “greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back or theirs” (p.107). To Douglass, keeping people ignorant of their own worth and personhood is a crime more ignoble than the beating, murdering, and auctioning of slaves because it denied them their humanity in the most basic and most important way. Even if Douglass had never escaped slavery, he would have at least felt free on the inside and known he was a person. His sisters and his fellow slaves didn’t have even that knowledge.