An Introvert as Rebel
Introvert Frederick Douglass nurtured his intellect, moral understanding and ability to fire up others through his secret project of reading.
For most of us, reading is an ability we acquired in childhood and then for the rest of our lives take for granted. For Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), however, reading was a hard-fought and cherished tool of liberation, not only for him personally but also for the countless contemporaries empowered and inspired by his hard-hitting communications as orator, author, newspaper publisher and diplomat.
Born into slavery in the Southern state of Maryland, Douglass learned the alphabet as a young boy from the mistress of the family that owned him. When that woman’s husband found out, he forbade any further such teaching because, he said, literacy would ruin the boy as a slave. That overheard tidbit of conversation goaded Douglass to resolve to master reading, come what may.
His strategies for learning to read on the sly included befriending poor white boys who had some schooling, giving them some bread in exchange for “that more valuable bread of knowledge.” One text young Douglass studied again and again was a collection of speeches by Cato, Socrates, Napoleon, George Washington and many other historical figures. Lessons gleaned from those speeches enabled the adult Douglass to structure powerful logical arguments against slavery, delivered with commanding and persuasive rhetoric.
He used the same kind of ingenuity to teach himself to write. He learned to write his first four letters by watching how carpenters marked wood in a shipyard.
“After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, ‘I don’t believe it. Let me see you try it.’ I would then make the letters I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it was quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk.”
The narration in Douglass’s first of three published autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, makes it clear that mastering reading was an introvert’s quest – utterly inner directed. Reading gave Douglas ideals, hope and an understanding of his present in the light of history, as well as the determination to overcome his circumstances. All of this he kept alive on his own, without a mentor, teacher or advisor.
Yet the enslaved Frederick Douglass was sold, and sold again, ending up a field hand under the control of a harsh Mr. Covey, who whipped his slaves mercilessly. One day, though, Douglass had had enough and fought back so fiercely that Covey never laid the whip on him again.
“This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free… It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I resolved that, however long I might be a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.”
In 1838, 20-year-old Douglass finally escaped to New York State. There, he found the courage to speak up at an anti-slavery convention, thus embarking on the next stage of his life – bearing witness to evil, speaking truth to power and championing the cause of freedom with all his heart, soul and intelligence.
Harnessing the same determination he had applied to his project of reading, Douglass turned himself into a masterful public speaker. Observers noted the poise, dignity and deep conviction with which he faced skeptics and persuaded audiences. To awaken the conscience of his listeners and to urge them to help abolish slavery and oppression, he brought in the philosophical principles, ironies and values he had imbibed when he studied his book of classical orations.
Especially timely today, July 3rd, is a forceful speech he gave in 1852 in Rochester, New York, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Click on the video below to watch an electrifying presentation of young descendants of Frederick Douglass reciting portions of this speech. Douglass’s eloquent calling out of hypocrisy and injustice remains today a ringing call for a reckoning between America’s ideals and its reality.