The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Dover Value Editions)

Rating:
Summary: A Book Which Transformed My Life
Review: Frederick Douglass was a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, not too far from Baltimore where I live. His accounts of the treatment of slaves is indeed frightening. It is very important to note that when Frederick was young he was sent to live in Fells Point Maryland as a house slave. The wife of his owner thought it good to teach Frederick the alphabet. After Frederick learned the alphabet the woman showed her husband. He was furious with his wife, and told her that it you teach these ... to read they will want to know how to write. If they know how to wright, they might start thinking they are equal with white folks. He then ordered her to stop teaching Frederick anything 'that could interfere with his chores'. Unfortunately the damage was already done. Frederick became obsessed with reading and taught himself to read by studying newspapers in the streets and paying white kids to teach him. Slowly we see Frederick, through his own religion convictions, developing a liberation philosophy through education. Knowledge was his key to freedom, and it eventually led to his escape to the North.
One of the key points of this narration is that the slave owners used methods of controlling slaves which are very similar to the techneques of social control employed today in charming the masses. For instance, Frederick noticed that the slave masters made the slaves drink on holidays and observed them strictly to make certain that all of them spent their 'free' time drunk. They were always on the look-out for slaves that exhibited critical thinking attempting to hold conversations with their fellow slaves about their condition. Reminiscent of the fabled or not Willie Lynch manual on how to make and break a slave, these slave masters certainly knew what they were doing. The institution of slavery was highly developed, almost a science unto itself. Escaping this was the main theme in the first half of Frederick Douglass's autobiography. The second part deals with his efforts to bring slavery to an end all together by raising peoples consciousness to the inhumanities of the practice. I am indebted to Frederick Douglass for bringing me closer to the reality which African Americans live through day in and day out. Overall one finds it very difficult to account for all of the valuable contributions this work can bring to the human heart.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful book, on many levels.
Review: This book, written in Douglass' later years, not only lifted my spirits but did a great deal to reestablish my faith in humanity. This was a man who had every opportunity, and reason, to be bitter and/or vengeful. He, instead, chose to fight, with his intellect and his golden tongue, for what he, and others chained in slavery and social subservience, rightfully disserved as a member of our human race. He was a man of conviction and inner strength who taught himself to write with an elegance that I have never seen equaled. I strongly recommend this book.