Today, when you think of the civil rights movement and how it started you think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Actually, the civil rights movement started a long time ago and one of those people who helped to start it was Frederick Douglass. He has been called the father of the civil rights movement. Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist and social reformer. He was a former slave who escaped from slavery in Maryland. After he escaped, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts. One of the reasons he did this is because of how poorly he knew slaves were treated by their slave owners. Frederick Douglas knew this because he was a former slave and was poorly treated by his slave owners.
Frederick Douglass wrote about how he and other slaves were treated in his books and journals. One aspect Frederick Douglass talks about is how poorly he was fed moving from one plantation to another. In order to fully understand how being poorly fed transformed Frederick Douglass’ life from using food as a means of trade to using it as a means of nourishment for survival one must compare and contrast it with other poor treatments he endured such as education, fighting, and harsh work labor.
First, let’s compare and contrast Frederick Douglass using his food as a means of trade in his hunger to be fed knowledge to educate himself. Martyris states that: When he was about 8 years old, Douglass was sent to Baltimore, which proved to be a turning point. The mistress of the house gave him the most precious gift in his life she taught him the alphabet.
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But when her husband forbade her to continue teaching slaves to read and write because it was a crime she immediately stopped his lessons. It was too late. The little boy had been given a peek into the transformative world of words and was desperate to learn. He did so by bartering pieces of bread he had free access to; in Baltimore, the urban codes of slavery were less harsh than in rural Maryland for lessons in literacy. His teachers were white neighborhood kids, who could read and write but had no food. ‘This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.’ (8)
This example clearly explains how Douglass at an early age began to hunger for food for his mind instead of food for his body. Here you see how Frederick Douglass would trade his food for nourishment, from his slave owner in Baltimore, to the white kids for them to feed his mind by teaching him to read and write. At this point in Douglass’ life, in Baltimore, things were not as bad as they were about to be as Mr. Auld told his wife not to teach him anymore. Frederick Douglass states that Mr. Auld said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take a mile. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master and to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (19).
Douglass learning at this point would end for his mind and the beginning of his nourishment for survival of his body would begin. Next, Frederick Douglass hunger to be fed knowledge would change to using food as a means of nourishment for survival. According to Martyris: Hunger was the young Fred’s faithful boyhood companion. ‘I have often been so pinched with hunger that I have fought with the dog ‘Old Nep’ for the smallest crumbs that fell from the kitchen table, and have been glad when I won a single crumb in the combat (3).
This shows how Douglass’ hunger to be fed food for survival changed him and caused him to resort to fighting. He degraded himself to fight a dog in order to eat for survival. He had become so barbaric from being broken as a slave. Then, as time went on at the plantation of Thomas Auld, Douglass’ hunger of food for survival would continue because of harsh work labor. According to McGasko, Auld was a cruel man who did not feed his slaves enough, treated Douglass poorly as a farm hand, and beat him for six months constantly to break him (1-2). This occurred again on another plantation with Master Thomas where he would work for not enough food there.
According to Frederick Douglass, Master Thomas gave four slaves in the kitchen including himself less than a half of a bushel of corn meal per week and with no meat or vegetables (24). Also according to Frederick Douglass, This was not enough live off of, so they had to beg and steal whichever one came first in order to survive (24). Finally, in order to fully understand how being poorly fed transformed Frederick Douglass’ life from using food as a means of trade to using it as a means of nourishment for survival one must compare and contrast it with other poor treatments he endured such as education, fighting, and harsh work labor.
The term fed has taken on several meaning throughout Frederick Douglass’s life and it wasn’t just being fed food. Throughout Douglass’ life he wanted and long to be fed knowledge. As you can see there were long periods of his life where obtaining knowledge did not happen. Frederick Douglass during his life time went through being poorly educated, fighting, and harsh work labor in his young years. Through it all he made it. Frederick Douglass is well known as an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York.
Works Cited
- Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.” Electronic Edition. Documenting the American South, https://docsouth.unc,edu/neh /douglass/douglass.html. Accessed 27 November 2018.
- Martyris, Nina. “Frederick Douglass On How Slave Owners Used Food As A Weapon Of Control.” The Salt, 10 February 2017, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/10 /514385071/frederick-douglass-on-how-slave-owners-used-food-as-a-weapon-of-control. Accessed 26 November 2018.
- McGasko, Joe. “From American Slave to American Man: The Escape of Frederick Douglass.” Biography, 2 September 2015, www.biography.com/news/frederick-douglass-autobiography-facts. Accessed 26 November 2018.
