3.1 Frederick Douglass and the Slave Narrative

Notes

A slave narrative is a first-person account of life in slavery, often written to expose its cruelty and persuade readers to support abolition.

• Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) was born into slavery in Maryland, escaped in 1838, and became a leading abolitionist, writer and speaker.
• His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) is told in his own voice, which proved that an enslaved man could be a gifted author.
• He shows that literacy is a path to freedom. When his master, Hugh Auld, said that learning would make a slave "unfit" to be a slave, Douglass understood that reading was power.
• Worked example: Douglass uses plain, precise details to appeal to the readers' conscience, so the facts themselves do the persuading.