Work · African & Africana Philosophy
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The story of his enslavement and escape: how reading opened the way to freedom and how resistance turned “a slave” into “a man”.
Introduction
Douglass’s first autobiography was published in Boston in 1845 by the Anti-Slavery Office, with prefaces by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Seven years after his escape, it names places and people, which put him at risk of recapture. It describes his childhood separated from his mother, the violence on the plantations, his lessons with Sophia Auld, the fight with Edward Covey and, without details that could have endangered others, his flight. An appendix distinguishes the Christianity of slaveholders from the Christianity of Christ. Thousands of copies sold within months, translations followed, and the book became the best-known slave narrative; Douglass later expanded the story in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times (1881).
Connections
Taken up in
- The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness1993 · Paul Gilroy
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