Slave Families example essay topic

Frederick Douglass once said, 'there can be no freedom without education. ' I believe this statement is true. During slavery, slaves were kept illiterate so they would not rebel and become free. Many slaves were stripped from their families at an early age so they would have no sense of compassion towards family members. Some slaves escaped the brutal and harsh life of slavery, most who were uneducated.

But can there be any real freedom without education? Freedom is something many slaves never had the opportunity to witness. They were simply uneducated, illiterate machines who did whatever they were told. But few fortunate slaves were given the gift to be educated by someone. One of these fortunate persons was named Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born a slave.

He never had the chance of knowing his mother. As mentioned before, slaves were stripped from their families, leaving them no sense of compassion. In the book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass says, 'Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much of the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger. ' (2) Douglass secretly met with his mother about 4 times during his whole life. He said he never really got to know her being he was only a child and the never had much of a conversation. These sorts of incidents happened to slaves throughout America and permanently scarred most slaves and their families.

Slave owners not only broke slave families up, but they also tried to keep all the slaves illiterate. In the book slave owners thought, '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. If you teach a slave how to read, they would become unmanageable and have no value to his master.

' Masters thought that if a slave became literate then they would rebel and get other slaves to follow them. Also masters lied to slaves saying learning would do them no good, only harm them. They tried using that reverse psychology to make it seem like what they were doing was right. However many slaves did learn to read and become literate. Douglass was taught on his plantation by a lady named Mrs. Auld. She was the wife of the master Thomas Auld.

Douglass and Mrs. Auld would secretly meet and she would teach him to read. Douglass was one of the lucky ones who were blessed to learn how to read. Being a slave was very degrading and cruel. If a slave was given the chance to read, they most likely felt better about themselves and possibly cope with slavery better.