Compare And Contrast Frederick Douglass And Duvernay

Frederick Douglass wrote his narrative to denounce the horrors that happened because of slavery, while Ava DuVernay used her documentary “The 13th” to illustrate how mass incarceration is a new form, like slavery, to oppress minorities, especially black people. “The 13th” certainly functions as a continuation of what Douglass was trying to portray in his narrative and one of the ways in which this is reflected is the description of unfair murders in both the narrative and the documentary.
One of the ways in which DuVernay’s documentary continues to illustrate the horrors of oppression against the black community is the way in which both authors describe how slavery and the mass incarceration system lead to unjust treatment of African Americans that sometimes ends with murder. This occurs in Douglass’s narrative when Douglass talks about the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore and how “the killing of a slave… is not treated as a crime either by the courts or the
community.” This scene from Douglass’s narrative can be compared to the scene in “The 13th” where they show the murder of Trayvon Martin perpetrated by George Zimmerman.
In the documentary, they talk about how “the police could not arrest Zimmerman because of a Florida law called Stand Your Ground that says that you can kill someone if you feel threatened, even though it was Zimmerman who had pursued Martin throughout the neighborhood with a gun.” Zimmerman was found not guilty mainly due to this law influenced by ALEC which is a private club conformed by politicians and corporations that encourage mass incarceration. “The 13th” continues to talk about oppression against black people by giving us an example of how similar slavery and mass incarceration serve as a justification for the murders of African Americans. These two scenes manifest the injustice caused by slavery and mass incarceration. On one hand, Demby was killed by Mr. Gore without a justifiable reason and “his horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation.” On the other hand, Zimmerman shot Martin just because he felt threatened, even though he was the one
following Martin and the court declared him innocent of his crime. Even though these two assassinations were committed by a single person, they were also a consequence of broader problems like slavery and mass incarceration. Douglass used this scene to demonstrate that the institution of slavery acted as a justification for the murder of slaves, just like DuVernay used the killing of Trayvon Martin to communicate how mass incarceration served as an excuse for the murder of many African Americans. Ultimately, DuVernay used this vivid image to show the viewers how African Americans are still being oppressed and killed in American society through a system of mass incarceration, just like Douglass recounted through his writing the oppression against slaves caused by slavery.
Both, Douglass and DuVernay, wanted to exemplify the horrors caused by slavery and mass incarceration. While Douglass wrote about the murders of slaves to condemn slavery, DuVernay used an audible and visual representation of a murder to continue to talk about how African Americans are still suffering an oppression caused by slavery and mass incarceration.