The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Access to education is a fundamental right. It is what contributes to our ability to
sustain communities, cities, and countries. During the pre-civil war period, the right to an
education was restricted to only white people. This meant white society could enjoy and
reap the benefit of an education while others like Frederick Douglass were forced to
endure a life of slavery. It was not only culturally acceptable for blacks to be forced into
hard back-breaking work, but this was all they knew growing up; in a life of slavery. The
life of bondage into which Douglass was born taught nothing to him other than of
slavery's brutality and ruthlessness towards human beings. Uneducated, he remained
After Frederick was born, he worked for Captain Aaron Anthony. A cruel
man who worked his slaves on the plantation hard and treated them like animals. A good
example of this was the fact that, along with the de-humanizing conditions slaves faced,
they were also forced to eat their cornmeal mush from a trough. Animals and slaves were
treated in similar ways. In the mindset shared by the majority of white people it was
culturally acceptable to own, beat, starve, and deprive a black slave of their individuality.
Frederick Douglass was a young slave when he was sold to his new captors.
Traveling to Baltimore, Maryland to work for Hugh Auld, Douglass, in his new home,
made the first leap towards a re...