"My Bondage, My Freedom" part 1

A few weeks ago, christian hip hop artist Lecrae gave a  challenge to read " My Bondage,  My Freedom" by Frederick Douglass in honor of black history month.  He then asked that whoever would read it to write him a summary. I will post my summary in 3 parts on the blog so stay tuned for part 2 ( Here )  and 3 (Here  at a later date.

Part 1

Fredrick Douglass was a man born into many sorrows and well acquainted with grief. Grief that held him in the bonds of slavery for many years until he proved that with determination and education he could be rid of it's chains. Douglass shines light on the evils and horrors that were the American slave system. Such were the evils he mentions it leaves the reader shocked and appalled at our nation’s vicious roots. We will now examine these roots which made the slave system work, along with the many sins and hypocrisies of its proponents and how this affected Douglas's life based on his writings.            

               Before getting into details of Fredrick’s life, I want to present details of what it meant to be a slave. Slavery defined by Douglass is the “granting of that power by which one man exercises and enforces a right of property in the body and soul of another.” The conditions of slave life were unimaginable. They were given very little food to eat, while their masters had abundance. They were forced to work all day, year round under threat of being whipped. One aspect of slavery that really surprised me is that nursing mothers were allowed only one hour to feed their baby during the day. Since many of the slaves lived a few miles from the plantation mothers had to leave their babies in the corner of the work field just to have enough time to feed them. As a nursing mother myself I can never imagine being under these conditions. Slaves had no say how to live their life. They were always guilty of crime. Even in his book Douglass spares us from many horrifying details of being a slave.            

Douglass grew up without father or mother, one of the cruel realities of being born a slave. (Which may have proved beneficial in his anxiousness to escape, for there was no one holding him back). This occurred because slave holders viewed those of black skin color as nothing more than property, chattel, on the same par as animals. Thus they had no guilt in separating families for sake of wealth or for the guilt of sin. Many slave holders took pleasure in defiling black slave women. The consequence of slave offspring abounded much on these southern plantations.  Douglass wisely points out that "men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent." And no slave holder did have a "mind to repent". So they sold their own children away and separated many families to keep their sin hidden and lighten their conscience. But nothing the 'white master' could do was enough to blot out the transgression. They were always in a state of uneasiness, constantly living in a false idea of peace, walking around "troubled, like the restless sea". The children not sold away would be left to find a place to rest on their own. Without home or bed Douglass was forced to find sleep anywhere he could, the closet, or the kitchen corner.        

    Even though the tragedy of separating mother and child is one of the greatest evils the slave system holds, there is yet one greater evil. And that is to deny one education in order to keep the uneducated enslaved to the educated. This crucial point of slavery was unknown to the wife of one of Douglass's masters. If it wasn't for this lack of education on her part Fredrick Douglass may have never become the man we know him as today. He may have never become a freeman if not for this one woman innocently teaching him to read and write. As a child Douglass was sent to serve a family in Baltimore. It was an improvement from life on the plantation.  The wife of the master took in Fredrick as her own. She was truly unaware of the proper etiquette of a slave owner. For one day when Fredrick asked her to teach him to read she pleasantly agreed. His education came to an abrupt halt when the master found out about it, The master warned his wife "if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell; he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it." This was the prevalent thought of all slave holders. If you educate the slave they will read scripture for what it really says, they will  learn of freedom, and they will fight to obtain it. So here was the end of Fredrick's formal training. But the damage was already done. He had caught his first taste of freedom. From then on Douglass took advantage of every opportunity to learn to read and write. Whether exchanging food for lessons from neighborhood children or hiding in the masters house with a book. He realized that if the slave holders saw educating slaves as a repulsive thing then he must become educated and become very well educated at that. He could never be content as a slave anymore because through reading he gained the knowledge of freedom and yearned for it more than anything.