A personal hero of mine

Frederick Douglass

This is a partial tale of a personal hero of mine, Frederick Douglass. He was born a slave in Maryland around February either in 1817 or 1818.

I first became aware of his greatness when I read the letter he wrote to his “owner”. It should be required reading. To me it is every bit as powerful and impressive as The Declaration of Independence. If you’ve never read it, please do.

I am not going to do a full synopsis of his life, to get that you should read his books, they are as well written as the letter. I would recommend this one to start. These are a few of the things that made an impression on me from what I have read.

He was born into slavery and never really knew his mother. She worked on a different farm and walked 12 miles each way in the night just to lay down with him a few times. This journey had to be made after a full day in the fields and then she had to be back at her home farm before the overseer would wake the slaves. He says this separation was done intentionally to destroy the mother-child bond. It worked, when she died and he was seven, it affected him “with much the same emotions I should probably felt at the death of a stranger”.

When he was seven or eight he was sent to Baltimore to serve his owner’s brother in law’s family. He was amazed to see his new mistress Sophia smiling when she met him. Her heart was kind, but would be hardened by being a slave owner. She taught him a little reading and how to spell some three letter words. When her husband found out, he was very upset. “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.* A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master–to do as he is told to do. Learning would ~spoil~ the best nigger in the world. Now, if you teach that nigger (speaking of Frederick) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

* an ell is a measurement of about 18 inches

Hearing this impressed upon Frederick a stronger desire to read, but after her husband’s rebuke, Sophia became very careful about making sure Frederick wasn’t reading. To circumvent this, he would take bread from the house and bribe poor white kids into helping him. Sometimes he would challenge them as to who could write more words and learned that way. He also took Sophia’s child’s copy book and traced over the letters young Thomas had written in them.

Learning to read was a blessing, it opened new worlds and he read arguments that slavery was wrong (something he knew in his soul, but lacked the words to articulate) and how the slavers tried to justify it. It was a double edged sword, because it did make him hate his station in life and he had many moments of wishing he was as dumb as a beast.

When he was fourteen or fifteen, he was sent back to field work and had many run ins with his master. After several whippings that served no good purpose in changing his disposition, he was sent away to Mr. Covey, a farmer with a reputation for breaking slaves. After six months of working as long as there was light and being beaten constantly, Frederick admits he was broken.

His turning point came one day when Mr. Covey tried to beat him and Frederick snapped and fought back, he says they had an almost two hour struggle. After this Frederick says he was never whipped again. He believes this is because Mr. Covey would lose his reputation and the income that came from it if was learned that Frederick had fought him to a standstill.

This experience reignited his desire to be free and he vowed to himself that at the earliest opportunity, he would escape.

I am only halfway through and there is still a lot of his story to come. I will make a second part and submit it next week.