Frederick Douglass, Self Taught Communicator

Frederick Douglass after 1884, with his second wife Helen Pitts Douglass (sitting). The woman standing is her sister, Eva Pitts. Unknown creator. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s Black History Month, and today’s post comes from one of the most inspiring books in American letters, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass’s autobiography is the story of how a slave became a famous abolitionist, diplomat, counselor to four presidents, and a national leader. This journey started when he realized the power of communication, specifically reading and writing.

Douglass was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland in 1818 and was separated from his mother before he was one. He would only see her a handful of times before she died. He was given virtually no clothes or bed and was overworked and underfed.

At eight, he was sent to Baltimore, where his new Master’s wife began teaching him the alphabet, before her husband told her: “It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.”

At eight years old, he realized, “From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

He carried a book with him while on errands, asking the White boys in town and in the streets, to teach him, sometimes bribing them with bread.

After learning to read, he discovered a book of Richard Sheridan’s speeches, and read it many times, inspiring in him a love of liberty and hatred of oppression.

He taught himself to write by telling the White boys he could write better than them, and when they told him to prove it, he would write the letters he knew, asking them to write the letters they knew. “During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement,” he wrote.

It wasn’t long before Douglass was teaching slaves from neighboring farms how to read or write on Sundays.

He eventually escaped slavery, and never stopped educating himself or developing his abilities as a writer and public speaker, eventually becoming a national leader of the abolitionist movement, highly regarded orator, and influential writer.

Alongside all that Douglas represents for and of America, we can take inspiration from the way he used the power of words to influence thinking, starting with his own, making possible all his later accomplishments.