Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. — Frederick Douglass ...

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Learning to be free: Frederick Douglass

"Learning is the pathway from slavery to freedom." (Frederick Douglass)

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." -- Frederick Douglass

From Blessings of Liberty and Education

Frederick Douglass September 3, 1894 Manassas, Virginia

LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND FRIENDS: As I am a stranger among you and a sojourner, you will, I hope, allow me a word about myself by way of introduction. I want to say something about the day upon which we met. Coincidents are more or less interesting and here is one such of a somewhat striking character. This day has for me a special interest. It happens to be the anniversary of my escape from bondage. Fifty-six years ago today, it was my good fortune to cease to be a slave a chattel personal and to become a man. It was upon the third day of September, 1838, that I started upon my little life work in the world. It was a great day for me. With slavery behind me and all the great untried world before me, my heart throbbed with many anxious thoughts as to what the future might have in store for me. I will not attempt here any description of what were my emotions in this crisis. I leave you to imagine the difference between what they were then, and what they are on this happy occasion. I then found myself in a strange land, unknown, friendless, and pursued as if I were a fugitive from justice. A stranger to every one I met in the streets of the great city of New York. For that city was the first place in which I felt at liberty to halt in my flight farther North. New York at that day was by no means a city of refuge. On the contrary, it was a city in which slave hunters and slave catchers de-lighted to congregate. It was one of the best fields for slave-hunting sport this side of Africa. The game Once started was easily taken. If they had caught me I should have been elsewhere than here to assist in founding an Industrial School for colored youth in Virginia...

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...In his natural condition, however, man is only potentially great. As a mere physical being he does not take high rank, even among the beasts of the field. He is not so fleet as a horse or a hound or so strong as an ox or a mule. His true dignity is not to be sought in his arms or in his legs, but in his head. Here is the seat and source of all that is of especially great or practical importance in him. There is no fire in the flint and steel, but it is friction that causes it to flash, flame and burn and give light where all else may be darkness. There is music in the violin, but the touch of the master is needed to fill the air and the soul with the concord of sweet sounds. There is power in the human mind, but education is needed for its development... Of all the creatures that live and move and have their being on this green earth, man at his birth is the most helpless and the most in need of instruction. He does not even know how to seek his food. His little life is menaced on every hand... From first to last his existence depends upon instruction.

Yet this little helpless weakling, whose life can be put out as we put out the flame of a candle, with a breath, is the lord of creation, though in his beginning he is only potentially this lord, with education he is the commander of armies; the builder of cities; the tamer of wild beasts; the navigator of unknown seas, the discoverer of unknown islands, capes and continents, and the founder of great empires and capable of limitless civilization.

Education, on the other hand, means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free. To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is easy to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness and to defeat the very end of their being. They can neither honor themselves nor their Creator. Than this, no greater wrong can be inflicted; and, on the other hand, no greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earnestly this day endeavoring to do, the means of an education.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being ~a slave for life~ began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator." Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as

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having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master-- things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.

In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers... I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.

... Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of ~abolition.~ Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was "the act of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed... After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the words ~abolition~ and ~abolitionist,~ and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves.

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