If we look at the struggles of Frederick Douglass to read and write, we see how the institution of slavery was successful in large part because of denying the means of literacy to blacks. One day when he was learning the A-B-C’s with the wife of his master, the master took her aside and said of her pursuits, “If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy”(Douglass 36). This shows not only that blacks were denied the means of literacy, but that their white owners new denying them the means of literacy was one sure way of keeping them in bondage.
Of course, these words of his master only inspired Douglass to find the means of acquiring literacy at any cost. He would receive lessons from the poor white children in his neighborhood by having a ready supply of bread with him, since the poor white children were often less well-fed than Douglass, “As many of them as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read” (Douglass 40). When it came to writing, Douglass would mimic the written letters used by the construction workers at the boat docks and learned to copy letters they used to earmark various pieces of wood for whichever part of a ship it was destined. However, with literacy comes the loss of innocence and ignorance and Douglass discovered that possessing the skills of literacy often caused him mental anguish because he could more fully understand the destitute nature of his slavery. The reading and writing he pursued began to “torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning
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