Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)

I read this with one of my sons for a very interesting college course about American culture.  The core question in the section of the course that includes this reading is this:
How can a country that was based on the premise of 'liberty and justice for all' have supported slavery for so long?

It is a sobering question to tackle, and one of the key texts is this narrative, written by a man who was born into slavery of a black woman slave and her white master.   The book was written less than a decade after he escaped from Baltimore to New York, with some undisclosed help, and then moved northward, to work, and then to become the most prominent abolitionist of his time.

The first hand account of exactly how a man who was intellectually gifted handled the psychological experience of slavery was very well conveyed--and it was not done with drama or rancor.  The tone is matter-of-fact--this is the way it was.  The physical brutality, the humiliation, the profound lack of basic human rights that existed within homes that professed to be moral and spiritual is depicted without regard for who will be harmed by the knowing of the truth.  It is as it should be.  But the psychology of slave and slaveholder--the damage that is done to the humanity of each--those are the most eloquent parts of the book.

There are two reasons that this book has power today, long after enslavement became illegal in America.  The first is that there are still enslaved people here--they are women who are trafficked for sex, largely from Eastern Europe and Russia.  Their plight is not different than Fredrick Douglass'.  The second is that race is still a loaded subject in the United States, 150 years after the Civil War and almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1965.  Yes, we were able to elect a black President, but no, we cannot forget the fact that he is black.  We cannot just let him govern. So, Frederick Douglass, that brave move to escape, and the trials and tribulations that followed still have relevance for us in America.  Thank you for sharing your story.