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Lessons on Freedom from a Former Slave

In a section of his autobiography, called "Learning to Read and Write," the nineteenth-century former slave Frederick Douglas examines the changes he experienced because of his new-found literacy, explaining that it was through these changes that he eventually fled to his freedom in the North. The freedom-- and, he would argue, bondage-- he experienced as he learned to read foreshadowed the official freedom he found after his escape. His was a freedom first of the mind.

Such freedom, however, was to him both a blessing and a curse. While his ability to read for the first time gave him the ability to express his feelings in words, it also led him to hate his masters and to cause him discontent with his slavery. The frustration he felt at being a slave became all-consuming, so that every object, "animate or inanimate," reminded him of freedom. His thoughts became so overwhelming that he envied his fellow slaves for their ignorance and wished he were dead.

They also pushed him to obtain the thing he so desired: freedom. The lesson I took from Douglas's essay was two-fold. First, I was reminded that slavery still exists, though on a plane more subtle than that so many in this country endorsed 150 years ago. It exists when we fall into the habits we know to be so harmful to us and those around us, and it exists in our refusal to forgive others or ourselves. Second, I learned that the path to freedom can sometimes feel very much like slavery. Before he made any effort to become free, Douglas had to learn exactly how dark his station in life was, a knowledge that led to a very uncomfortable discontent. Had it not been for that discontent, however, he never would have found the motivation to become free.

The importance of these lessons is found not only in what we gain by heeding them, but also by what we lose when we neglect them. In the context of this essay, this could not be better illustrated than by the change Douglas's slaveholding mistress experienced when her husband forbid her from teaching him how to read. "Slavery," says Douglas, "proved as injurious to her as it did to me." He goes on,
"When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. 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 one of tiger-like fierceness."
Douglas further states that while this shift in attitude began when she followed the instruction of her husband, she eventually became even more vociferous in her opposition to Douglas's education than even he. She seemed to go further than her husband's wishes, angrily snatching newspapers from Douglas's hands and monitoring his behavior, suspecting him of reading when he was alone too long in another room. The woman who once taught Douglas the elements of reading, now she felt that education was not fit for slaves.

One could question, of course, whether or not there were other possible causes of this change of character; but whether it was the institution of slavery itself or another form of which Douglas was unaware, the cause was most definitely the same: slavery. Because of it, she moved from heaven to hell, and took Douglas with her.

It is a sobering lesson, but one we should heed if we are to gain our own freedom, or remain in it if we are already free. Certainly, Douglas teaches us that freedom is costly; but equally true, and even more pressing, he teaches us also that slavery costs more.

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