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Born a Slave Frederick Douglass By Judy P. Sopronyi
At the Anthonys' house, Frederick had to sleep in a closet and was often tormented and deprived of food by "Aunt Kate," the black cook and household despot who'd taken a dislike to him. The young boy witnessed beatings and whippings on the plantation, and once he saw a fellow slave shot dead for daring to run while he was being whipped. But there were those among the whites who tried to watch over Frederick. Lucretia Auld, Anthony's daughter, slipped Frederick food and found an opportunity to send him to Baltimore's Fell's Point neighborhood to help care for the child of her sister-in-law, Sophia Auld. Fell's Point was a haven for Frederick. Though still a slave, he was treated like a member of the family, and Sophia began to teach him to read, though her husband, Hugh, squelched it, saying, prophetically, "If you learn him how to read, he'll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he'll be running away with himself." But Frederick knew just enough to learn more on his own. At age 12 or 13 he took 50 carefully hoarded cents to buy a copy of The Columbian Orator and practiced its fine phrases and sentiments on his friends. He'd heard and read the word "abolition" in his short life but didn't realize its association with slavery until about the time he bought his book. There was hope! Now he understood there were even some whites working to abolish slavery; there was a possibility, however remote, he wouldn't have to spend his entire life as another man's property. Frederick's teen years were rough. His height, bearing and resentment of slavery made him an unsettling presence in the Auld household. He was hired out to a slave-breaker whose abuse planted the strong desire to escape. At Fell's Point Frederick learned the trade of ship caulking, then convinced his owner to let him hire himself out, paying his own room and board and keeping anything left over. He slowly built up a small sum of money that helped him escape to the North, dressed as a sailor. He made his way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he adopted the name Douglass (at first he'd chosen Johnson until he realized the greater part of his fellow escaped slaves had done the same) and encountered Northern bigotry on the job site. At a church meeting in 1839, he rose to speak against slavery. Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison put a notice about Douglass' speech in his newspaper, Liberator, and the young black man's life was set on a course toward greatness. He spoke throughout the North and abroad, became a friend of President Abraham Lincoln and a staunch supporter and campaigner for the Republican Party. He published two newspapers to further the cause of blacks and supported women's suffrage with equal fervor. No one who heard him speak or met him could deny the humanity and intellect of blacks.
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