1. Frederick douglass background info and picture
1.1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su-4JBEIhXY
1.2. Frederick Douglass as abolitionist
2. slavery
2.1. better to not know what you are missing
2.2. knowledge is more a curse than a blessing to a slave
2.3. being dreadfully aware that you are a slave for life
2.4. soul sucking
2.5. anyone aware of their living condition is in a perpetual hell
2.6. slavery is a double edged sword
2.6.1. can be as dangerous to the slaveholder as to the slave
2.6.2. if slaveholder treats slave as human being they are looked down upon and then the slave becomes lazy and apathetic..?
3. Education
3.1. master hughs
3.1.1. slave owner
3.2. mistress
3.2.1. kind and caring until she had slave
3.2.2. slavery turns even the master into an animal
3.2.3. ferocious tiger woman
3.2.4. feels guilty
3.2.4.1. tries to keep him away from education
3.2.5. douglass thinks if he can learn and write he can forge a document letting him free
3.2.6. teaches douglass alphabet
4. douglas
4.1. learns how to write from school boys by tricking them
4.2. first letters were learned to write from watching the shippwrightes
4.3. mistress taught him alphabet before she starting treating him as a slave
4.4. learned to read and write in the most subtle ways
4.4.1. tricking school boys
4.4.2. watching shipwright draw letter s,l,f,a
4.4.3. writing in the white boy he lived withs copybook.
5. main points
5.1. the trauma douglas is going through besides being slave is that of awareness. of his condition
5.2. i feel the mistress was unwillingly cruel to douglass just by teaching him the alphabet.
5.2.1. not to sound like a supporter of the instituition of slavery
5.2.2. but with no visible way to free himself he torments in his new found intellect.
5.3. he is aware of his condition and suffers more from wishing himself dead
5.4. at the end of the story he does two things. 1. learns how to read and write by copying his masters handwriting and other tedious means 2. he resolves himself to run away as suggested by the two irish shipmen.
6. qoutes
6.1. "she at first lacked the depravity necessary indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness"pg.259 para 1
6.2. "it was at least necessary for her to have some training in the ecercise of irresponsible power." pg.259. paragraph 1
6.3. "Frederick Douglass was the most important black American leader of the 19th century."
6.3.1. opening statement from http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/bio.html
6.4. "There is perhaps no argument more frequently resorted to by the Slaveholders in support of the slave system, than the inferiority of the slave. This is the burden of all their defence of the institution of slavery, "the negro is degraded—he is ignorant, he is inferior—and therefore 'tis right to enslave him."
6.4.1. this quite taken from the american prejudice against color: an address to cork, Ierland http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/support8.html
6.4.2. Douglass provides a very clear and concise point that all white southerners defend the institution of slavery with the pretext of "they are slow ignorant, and inferior to the average man"
6.4.3. he goes on to say, in my own words, "so what? what if we are inferior were still man and we deserve the same rights as every other man."