Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass is one of the great Americans in our history and right now we certainly need role models.  He was born into slavery around 1818 and escaped to freedom in 1838.  Douglass would go on to become a leader in the 19th century abolitionist movement, a powerful orator, editor writer and statesman. He was a lifelong supporter of women's suffrage and spoke out wherever he saw injustice, particularly when it came to ending slavery and working for civil rights.

Douglass wrote three memoirs.  His most famous is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass published 1845. It is the first book I have read for the 2020 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by a person of color.  It's a suprisingly short book, 45 pages, but it is very powerful dealing as it does with Douglass' early years growing up on a Maryland plantation and what he experienced and saw around him.  Here is Douglass writing about his mother Harriet Bailey who died when he was very young:

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.  She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home.  She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work.  She was a field hand, and a whipping was the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise ... She would lie down with me and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.  Very little communication ever took place between us.  Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardship and suffering:

There are passages in this memoir that make for difficult reading.  Douglass knew first hand what slavery was like.  He tells us the stories of what he witnessed and  experienced at the hands of barbaric slaveholders.  When he was ten he left the plantation to work for Mr. and Mrs. Auld who lived in the city of Baltimore.  Mrs Auld began teaching Douglass to read but she stopped when Mr Auld told her it was dangerous and then things began to change:

"Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities.  Under its influence the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to tiger-like fierceness ... If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself.  All this, however, was too late The first step had been taken". 

Frederick Douglass would continue to learn to read and write on his own and today many of his articles and speeches are online.   His relevance continues, strikingly so.  Currently there is a debate over the 1619 Project sponsored by the New York Times about slavery and the founding of America and whether the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.

It's interesting to note that William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass had a similar disagreement over the American Constitution in the mid 19th century.  Garrison, also an abolitionist felt that the constitution was pro-slavery and an "agreement with  hell".  He refused to participate in American electoral politics until slavery was abolished.  Douglass maintained that the constitution, though flawed, was an anti-slavery document and he worked throughout his life to make its founding priciples a reality.