Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass asserts that he, as an adolescent "understood the pathway from slavery to freedom" upon his comprehension of English reading. To contemporary audiences, this may be a hard concept to grasp, an individual reared from birth as a slave understanding the significance of literacy and equating such with freedom. His cognition of this enormous concept can be explained as such: by breaking the literacy barrier, Douglass raised his status (symbolically) from a subhuman, slave status, to human, a White equal. Because all humans are entitled to certain rights, his symbolic progression from slave to human affords those rights, in particular the right to freedom.

Slaves were forbidden to read and slave owners were forbidden to teach slaves to read and write. The existence of such a restriction on educating slaves is proof that the slaveholders felt a need to suppress the capabilities of slaves. As a slave, Douglass was given the opportunity to learn and elevate his status only to have all that,