His mother was an enslaved woman named Harriet Bailey. We also know that he was the offspring of a white man whom he believed was his enslaver, Aaron Anthony.

We know that Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. These passages reflect four major turning points in Douglass's life: 1) the brutal whipping of his Aunt Hester, 2) the physical altercation with Covey, 3) the gift of literacy, and 4) the reaction Douglass had to receiving freedom in the North. I'll begin with a brief overview of his family life, and then I'll shift to his writing and rhetoric through an exploration of some of the important passages from a diverse body of his written work. What would an enslaved person want to say to their owner ten years after they're free, after they escaped to freedom? What kind of questions and statements do you think they would have?īut as I mentioned, today I want to talk about Frederick Douglass's life and his writings from enslavement well into his years of freedom. The letter closes as follows: 'I am your fellow man, but not your slave.' We rarely get this perspective, where we see or read slaves responding to their owners about their experience with enslavement. You'll find that as a theme in some of his writings. Within these recollections, Douglass maintained a tone devoid of anger or revenge. Providing more detail, he recalled, 'the chain, the gag, the bloody whip, the deathlike bloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman, the appalling liability of his being torn away from his wife and children, and sold like a beast in the market.' These are Douglass's words describing what it was like to be an enslaved person. In this document, he lamented that slavery was a condition that he dreaded more than death. It's helpful to know a little bit about them as human beings, not just what they're known for historically.Ī decade after his escape from slavery, Frederick Douglass sent a letter to his former owner.

I think it is really important to think about historical figures as people-as regular, ordinary figures. A lot of us see him as an orator, but he was also a father, a husband, and a grandfather. I'd like to present a different perspective on Frederick Douglass. Earlier this month at our 'American Writing on the Civil War' teacher workshop, Daina Ramey Berry, associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin, shared these insights on the life and work of Frederick Douglass.

The life of frederick douglass