Narrative of the Life of An American Slave-Frederick Douglass

There are men. And then there are heroes among men.

Frederick Douglass I consider to be the latter of the two.

In a world that is currently predisposed to giving up when the going gets tough and persuades people—through the medium of television advertising—to flee to the sanctity of psychotropics, here is an example where someone faced incredible odds, and persevered to tell a tale that immortalized his legacy and serves as inspiration to us all.

***

In his childhood Frederick Douglass never actually knew who his father was, only through hushed whispers did he come to discover that he was white and was also—most likely—his slave-mothers master. It was common practice during those primitive slave-days of Maryland (in order to alleviate the aggravation of separation) for the Mother to be kept apart from her children, and she only saw her son Frederick sparingly until her death when he was 7 years old.

During this time of adolescence, Frederick was raised primarily by his maternal Grandmother in the Chesapeake Bay area, where he watched the sails drift in and out of port, oftentimes attaching a metaphorical sentimentality to the white tips silhouetted against the blue skyline, dreaming of one day being upon the bow with the destination of freedom set upon the manifest.

He recollects being traded to various slave masters. Some with a sense of compassion for him as a human being, others devoid of any at all.

At age 6 he is separated from his Grandparents and sent to live at the Wye House Plantation. It is the wife of Hugh Auld—Sophia, that completely alters the trajectory of his life, and immortalizes his name forever.

From the beginning, Sophia treats Frederick like a human being and provides him with clean clothes, adequate food, shelter, and, at age 12, begins to teach him the alphabet. Upon this discovery of Sophia educating Frederick, Hugh strongly disapproves of the situation, foreseeing knowledge within slaves as a means to instigate a rebellious spirit. Under the influential direction of Hugh, Sophia snatches a newspaper out of Frederick's hands when she catches him reading it and then hides any other reading materials, even her Bible, as a means of keeping Frederick chastised to ignorance of the truth of his situation.

This revelation of knowledge arouses within Frederick an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, as he now has discovered the necessary key to unlock his tether of bondage: knowledge.

From this point forward Frederick does whatever he can to invest in expanding the frontier of his brain. He carries a book everywhere he goes and even organizes contraband deals with poor white children from the neighborhood in exchange for them teaching him how to write.

"I used to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me more valuable bread of knowledge." (Pge. 53)

He utilizes these sharpened skills to organize Sunday study groups in which he teaches other slaves to read and write and develop their minds to the point that they rid themselves of the notion that slavery is their forever destiny.

This leads to a raid and Frederick is then sent by Thomas Auld off to live under the thumb of veteran "slave breaker" Edward Covey. Who—through the medium of hunger pangs and whip lashings that were so frequent, that wounds never had a chance to heal—demoralizes Frederick from an aspiring intellectual into an absolute brute. Covey's oppressive nature grows to become such a hawk on Frederick's shoulder that he eventually snaps and does the unthinkable and retaliates by physically overpowering his master into submission.

It is this very act that resurrects Frederick's spirit from brute back into that of a man. And, after having seen that Frederick's spirit would never be broken, Covey never touches Frederick again.

Frederick then explains how he attempted one failed escape attempt, was caught, jailed, and then was forced to work on the dockyards as a ship hand and was beaten unmercifully by the white apprenticed dockworkers who resented his status of a slave, nearly gouging out his eye in the process.

He flees to the aid of the Auld's, where Hugh and Sophia take pity upon his plight and even try (unsuccessfully) to find a lawyer for him.

After this he gets a job as a caulker and hands over majority of his wages to his master, but eventually slips through the channels of the Chespeake aboard a ship and reaches New Bedford, and, ultimately, freedom.

***

Frederick Douglass's story, I think, is one of the most relevant and important narratives that should be taught within the curriculum of every school system.

Before cracking this book on my own volition I am ashamed to admit that I knew little to nothing of who Frederick Douglass was as both a person and abolitionist. Now, granted, I paid very little attention throughout all of my schooling and—after looking back at my transcripts—have no idea how I graduated. So perhaps I just wasn't paying attention in class on the day that we were given the provided history of Frederick Douglass. But I honestly do not recall a thing being said about him throughout all my years of schooling. Maybe he was lumped in with the Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King's during black history month. And if so, it was only a subtle utterance, if that.

Much like Frederick, my thirst/quest for knowledge came about organically. When I was force-fed uninteresting information and chastised for not digesting it and regurgitating parroted facts, it never resonated and even what little I did remember for the sake of a test was easily forgotten.

It was in my spare time, under the direction of several other artists who cited their influences, that I began to cultivate a sense of self and discover where my interests truly lay.

Oftentimes these proved to be uneducated voices that would lead me down errant paths. Where the opinion of sharpening the mind was debased in favor of abusing one's vessel for the appeal of a widely accepted aesthetic; in which treating your body as nothing more than a garbage disposal was the cool thing to do.

Despite these years of addled wandering, there was one artist whose music I enjoyed in particular, Matthew Good, who cited Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as his favorite author. I remember reading over the message boards and seeing people compare notes over certain works of his and I felt ashamed that I was ill-equipped to join the conversation because I wasn't reading anything at the time.

Henceforth I bought all of his works, read some of them, understood little, but noticed that, no matter how unrelatable I found the material, there was a lasting sense of fulfillment that transcended beyond the final period of every book that I finished.

Nourishment for the brain.

It is incomprehensible to me—and probably 90% percent of the people walking the planet at this moment—to be forbidden the keys of knowledge. To be kept deliberately stupid and ignorant—via the enforcement of a whip and liquor induced holidays—of ones station in life as nothing more than a commodity for slave-overseers.

Frederick's reality that he paints is daunting to imagine and makes one shudder at the sentences when we let our imagination attempt to try on his boots for a walk in more primitive times. Where such a thing as human rights are akin to a mere fantasy, and men find sanction for their heinous actions through the blessing of ignorant churches that follow the law of man, while ignoring that of God.

But, with all of the amazing technological advances in society, have we ever transcended beyond this primordial landscape, or, simply altered the terrain?

In Narrative of the Life of a Slave, we read how Douglass speaks of masters providing their slaves with copious amounts of alcohol during the Christmas break, to keep them drunk as a means of reinforcing servitude and suppressing any possibility of insurrection.

Do we see this same application today?

In my opinion, the answer is yes. But on more of a widespread scale.

150 years ago subservience was to be implemented by the simple means of brutality. In modern-age it is through subterfuge. The tether we attach to the rectangular monoliths that sit in our pockets has the propensity to lead us far more astray than we could ever imagine. The more strength we give to the yoke of false ideas designed to instigate conflict and distort the truth, the further man falls into the hands of his captor.

If we bypass the direct torch of knowledge bequeathed to us from our ancestors in deference of relying solely upon unseen puppeteers for our information, then we shall never truly become liberated. And in this absent void grows the adoption of ludicrous notions, strife, turmoil, and inconsistencies.

It is this very lethal combination which I believe has blinded society to the true societal ills and completely rooked one political party into perpetuating a monstrous imposter.

At its core, the democratic party of today is just the same as it was in the days of Scarlett O'Hara. Only instead of the white sheets they hid themselves under in the 1800's, they cloak themselves in the hijacked flags of exploited social justice movements. I see a party that is still very much wrapped in embitterment over having lost the Civil War and is stopping at nothing to regain power, regardless of the drastic measurements.

Just as democratic slave owners concocted evil measurements to fortify the walls of intellectual paralysis in their slaves by keeping them whipped during the season and drunk in the off season of Frederick's day. So to do they do the same in today's modern age by swindling them at the ballot box with hallow promises and delivering nothing but amplified strife in return. They filter drugs into black neighborhoods with one arm, and lock them up with the other. Enhance the destruction of the black nuclear family with Planned Parenthood establishments, liquor stores, and aggrandize gun violence to accelerate gentrification. Just as Furious Styles pointed out in Boyz In The Hood.

Through the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson once quipped "I'll have N*****s voting Democrat for the next 200 years." (Blackout-Candace Owens, among other sources.)

And it is through the adoption of its closely related cousin of Marxist techniques that the democratic party demands the same absolute subservience of its black voters now as it did of slaves 150 years ago.

*You don't dare question party mantra's, regardless of how ludicrous they may seem, no matter what. Lest you become ostracized like the aforementioned Candace Owens, Robert Smith, Herschel Walker, and Amber Rose.*

It is society's forgetfulness of the sins of our fathers that prohibits its ability to correlate the deceitful methods of today with that of the past. But just as Frederick Douglass saw through the facade of forbidden knowledge, so too does the ability lie within us to shake free from this tether and liberate ourselves from modern day slavery.

In Frederick Douglass's unerring persistence to enrich the scope of his mind I see inspiration that carries me forward on a day to day basis and I pride myself in spending more time within libraries and buried in books than up at television screens from the depths of bar stools.

There is much to be learned from the voices of the forefathers of our past, but it is up to us to listen.

Grade: A+

Verdict: Read