Frederick Douglass Resistance

Frederick Douglass was a slave born around the year 1818, never knowing his when he was born, and died in 1895. Douglass was born into slavery, but his determination proved to overcome his situation, as he persistently resisted the Peculiar Institution. He favored resistance through the mind mostly, writing his first work called A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in the year 1853, which would only contribute to his fight against slavery in the Americas. Frederick Douglass wrote about the treatment of slaves and himself in his narrative. As a result of studying Frederick Douglass’s writings, it is revealed that slaves were oppressed throughout their daily lives by restricting their education, implementing a
For instance, while the masters had full wardrobe of clothes to decide between, their slaves were given a yearly clothe allowance of “two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers” (Frederick Douglass 11). The clothes often times did not last, especially for the slaves that performed manual labor in the cotton fields or other places. Often this would leave the slaves in tattered clothes for a large portion of the year, and children were often nude until they hit puberty (Honeycutt Lecture). This served as a physical reminder of their low social status, but this was one of the lesser reminders, as the slaves were also often whipped, as Frederick Douglass recalls to “have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, amid her crying children, pleading for their mother's release” (Frederick Douglass 12). Actions like this were often performed in public to stand as a reminder for other slaves what would await them if they misbehaved. In the extreme cases, the master or another white would kill a slave and would receive barely any punishments if any at all. To the government, slaves were just property after all, so they did not receive the same rights as the white citizens did. There are even a few examples of formal mass executions done to African Americans like in the year 1712 when a group of
That is what the prison system uses along with slavery. The slave owners in the south often tried to limit their slaves’ interactions with others to avoid them learning about inalienable right, education, news, and the abolitionist movement. If their slaves do not know about any of these things, then they cannot support or replicate any of them. Especially since the television and radio were not readily available, news often came to people from word of mouth or written style. This was one of the main reasons the slave owners also denied their slaves education so that they could not find out about things happening in different areas. For instance, if all the slaves of the south knew about, “the first slave revolt in the New World erupted in Hispaniola in 1522” (Fear of Slave Revolts), then a lot more slaves would resist their masters and cause problems for the institution. Also, their slaves being ignorant of abolition movements would mean a lot fewer runaway slaves to the north, but rumors spread among the slaves about abolitionists and the Underground Railroad, which Douglass did not agree with because it was too risky. The slaves spreading the news of the abolitionists and Underground Railroad often resulted in punishments for any slaves or some whites advocating for runaway slaves or the abolition movement. Virginia even had a law that, “prohibited masters from