Sources: Refer to Autobiography, David Blight, and Jeffrey Rosen (Pursuit of Happiness), German Reform, documentaries: Becoming Frederick Douglass (Amazon Prime); Frederick Douglass: In 5 Speeches on Max; Jim Crow Museum hosted by David Pilgrim (heroes section), James Baldwin quote.
Essay Prompt:
In recent years, there have been critics of teaching Jim Crow and racial injustice in the classroom. These critics claim that such teachings have degenerated into biased and extremist political ideology that is intended to indoctrinate students into an anti-American mindset with America painted as the unredeemable devil; that this anti-American mindset encourages helplessness and victimization, and that this mindset has corrupted educational institutions so that rather than teach critical thinking, they foster “Woke” political indoctrination. Write an essay that addresses the claim that teaching about the life of Frederick Douglass is a way of learning about racial injustice that avoids the aforementioned pitfalls because Douglass’ life embodies the importance of bearing witness to the truth, embracing individual self-agency to resist societal injustice, fighting to redeem America, and championing the wisdom of the Ancients for our continual self-improvement.
ChatGPT Response:
Title: Frederick Douglass: A Beacon of Truth, Agency, and Redemption in Understanding Racial Injustice
In recent years, there has been a growing critique of how racial injustice, particularly the era of Jim Crow, is taught in classrooms. Critics argue that such teachings often veer into biased and extremist political ideology, fostering an anti-American mindset and promoting feelings of helplessness and victimization among students. However, amidst this debate, the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass offer a compelling alternative. Douglass's journey from slavery to freedom embodies the principles of truth, individual agency, redemption, and wisdom, providing a nuanced and historically grounded approach to understanding racial injustice without succumbing to ideological extremism.
First and foremost, Frederick Douglass's life story serves as a powerful testament to the importance of bearing witness to the truth. Born into slavery in the early 19th century, Douglass endured unimaginable hardships but refused to be silenced. Through his autobiographical narratives and speeches, such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," he exposed the brutal realities of slavery and the systemic injustices faced by African Americans. Douglass's unwavering commitment to truth-telling challenges students to confront uncomfortable historical truths and fosters a deeper understanding of the complex legacies of racism and oppression in America.
Moreover, Douglass's life exemplifies the transformative power of individual self-agency in the face of societal injustice. Rather than resigning himself to victimhood, Douglass actively resisted oppression through education, activism, and advocacy. He famously stated, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." Douglass's emphasis on personal responsibility and moral courage empowers students to recognize their own agency in confronting injustice and effecting positive change in their communities.
Furthermore, Douglass's legacy is characterized by a steadfast belief in the redeemable potential of America. Despite experiencing firsthand the horrors of slavery and racism, Douglass remained optimistic about the possibility of America living up to its founding ideals of freedom and equality for all. He recognized that the struggle for justice was not a rejection of America but rather a demand for America to fulfill its promise of liberty and justice for all its citizens. By teaching about Douglass's unwavering faith in America's capacity for redemption, educators can instill in students a sense of hope and optimism for a more just and inclusive society.
Lastly, Douglass's advocacy for equality and justice was informed by the wisdom of the Ancients, drawing upon timeless moral principles and ethical reasoning. He believed in the importance of education, self-improvement, and moral integrity as essential tools for societal progress. Douglass's engagement with classical philosophy and literature underscores the importance of critical thinking and intellectual curiosity in addressing contemporary issues of racial injustice.
In conclusion, Frederick Douglass's life and legacy offer a compelling antidote to the pitfalls of biased and extremist ideological teachings about racial injustice. By studying Douglass's life, students can learn valuable lessons about the importance of truth-telling, individual agency, the potential for redemption, and the wisdom of the Ancients. Rather than fostering a divisive or victim-centric narrative, Douglass's story inspires critical thinking, moral courage, and a deeper understanding of America's complex history. In embracing Douglass's legacy, educators can cultivate an educational environment that promotes empathy, resilience, and a commitment to justice for all.
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Frederick Douglass Notes: Sources: Refer to Autobiography, David Blight, and Jeffrey Rosen (Pursuit of Happiness), German Reform, documentaries: Becoming Frederick Douglass (Amazon Prime)
Slaves could own nothing but their sounds, rhythms, songs, lyrics, tones, and language. It was their self-expression.
Based on the biography: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom: David W. Blight
FD said a prophet is someone who tells us about the unseen, the clues, and the handwriting on the wall.
FD was a man of words. His voice of persuasion and power was his only weapon to fight for justice.
Language and voice are tools against power; they are tools for argumentation and understanding.
FD lived through slavery, Reconstruction, Redemption, and Jim Crow. He saw the changes, upheavals, and contradictions of his country.
FD was obsessed with seeing African American history through the lens of Old Testament prophets and writing in the cadence of King James.
To write in the highest sense is to be a prophet: one who sees the unseen, assaults the mind and uses language to be the axe that breaks the frozen ocean. We must break apart stasis, long inactivity, resulting in entropy.
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Frederick Douglass and The Sunken Place
It would be irresponsible to discuss the Sunken Place without referencing the greatest American who ever lived, the freed slave, writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who not only articulated the Sunken Place in the anguish he poured out in his descriptions of the inhumanity of slavery but did so in the context of longing to one day be a freeman. In other words, Douglass at the lowest point of his Sunken Place would never give up hope for being free or let go of his identity as a freeman with self-agency and self-determination. We cannot emphasize that the Sunken Place is a powerful tool of instruction only when we see that it is not a capitulation to inaction and surrender to the evil of racism; instead, the Sunken Place is where might and resistance are resolved and we see that resistance to evil is a vital component of the Sunken Place.
The author of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass may be one of the first great writers to describe in detail the agony of being owned (body and soul) by other human beings and subject to their whims, greed, and cruelty.
Douglass may be one of the first great writers to describe the agony of forced sleep deprivation, starvation, overwork, arbitrary whippings, and forced illiteracy in order to give life to the white myth of black intellectual inferiority (a myth created to justify the cruelty of slavery itself).
Douglass may be the first writer to describe the agony of being forced to be a slave with a smile on your face and body language that exuded gratitude to the slavekeeper for enslaving you lest you be beaten to death for looking bored or ungrateful.
The Sunken Place Feature #1: Letting your oppressors write your narrative to aggrandize themselves and humiliate you
Douglass begins his memoir by observing that the slave masters falsely portrayed slavery to justify their depravity and to sugarcoat the agony that afflicted slaves.
Not only is slavery physically unbearable, Douglass observes, but to have your captors misrepresent you and your suffering at their barbaric hands creates a spiritual wound for which there are no words.
Heroically, Douglass defied the slave masters and taught himself to read and write so that he could bear witness to the human rights violations that happened to his people and give voice to his people. Likewise, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is told from a black protagonist’s point of view. The movie, like Douglass’ narrative, is told by a black voice.
Who gets to describe hell? The tormentor or the tormented? Clearly, the latter is the only moral answer.
The Sunken Place Feature #2: To be a nothing at birth, not human at all but property
Frederick Douglass and his fellow slaves didn’t know their birthdays because their births weren’t recorded. Symbolically, they “didn’t count” as humans. They grew up without a birthday and without knowledge of their age. It had to be estimated or counted by comparing their life circumstances to bookmarks in history.
Slaves were not allowed to ask their masters their birthdays because to do so was considered “impertinent” and disrespectful.
It was believed that Douglass’s father was a white man, a slaveholder, and he observes that slaveholders constantly fornicated with slave women, impregnated them, and disowned the babies as their children but rather counted them as slaves so these slaveholders could both gratify their lusts and increase their slave numbers at the same time.
It should be noted that these slave children were bullied more than the other children and often had to be sold because the white slaveholders’ wives were furious with being constantly reminded by these children of their husbands’ infidelity.
As best as can be known, Douglass was born in 1817 or 1818 during slavery and died in 1895. He lived through slavery, the Reconstruction Era, when the white government tried to give reparations to black people for the sins of slavery, and the ill-named Redemption Era when the white government catered to angry white citizens who resented the government helping black people and persuaded their elected officials to roll back reparations and replace Reconstruction with Jim Crow, an insidious reappearance of slavery under a different name.
The Sunken Place Feature #3: To be torn apart from your parents
Because Douglass was mere property, slavekeepers separated slave infants from their mothers as “a common custom” so no natural family bonds existed for these babies. As cruel as this practice was, it was even more cruel when slaveholders sold older children who were then separated from their parents after a familial bond had been established.
The Sunken Place Feature #4: To see your loved ones treated with abject cruelty by barbaric monsters
As a small child, Douglass witnessed many times his young beautiful Aunt Hester beaten by her slavemaster and he had to hear her terrifying screams. Mostly, he whipped her for his own whimsical pleasure but his most brutal beatings were for her falling in love with a young black man, which was forbidden because the slavemaster always “desired her presence.” He beat her to let her know she was his plaything, and this depraved cruelty left a permanent scar on the small child Frederick Douglass.
Additionally, as a child, Douglass witnessed many mothers who failed to wake up in time beaten by the cruel overseers in front of their children while the children begged the overseers to stop whipping their mothers but to no avail.
Witnessing this kind of human depravity with no guardrails put Douglass and his fellow slaves in the Sunken Place.
The Sunken Place Feature #5: The anguish and pain of slavery are so deep that words cannot describe them.
Douglass listened to his fellow slaves walk in the woods from the plantation to the Great House Farm and they would sing songs of sorrow that made him contemplate that the pain of slavery was so deep that the words he used to describe it were futile, that the only way to feel this pain, this Sunken Place if you will, was to listen to the “ineffable sadness” and “bitter anguish” in these songs his fellow slaves poured out in the woods.
Only by listening to these songs could Douglass get his “first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.”
The Sunken Place Feature #6: Being forced to live the lie that your slavemasters made you happy because they were kind
Douglass observes that while the slaves suffered unspeakable agony, they had to pretend that they were happy and that their masters were kind. To encourage this facade, masters would send spies into the plantations to record any stirrings of discontent and these malcontents would be ripped from family and friends and sold to some place of horror even worse than the hell that they lived in.
The Sunken Place Feature #7: Knowing that the pathway from slavery to freedom is literacy, a condition that the slavemasters prohibited to prevent discontent in their slaves.
When the white caretaker Sophia Auld taught Douglass how to read and write, she was giving him the dignity proffered on any human being, yet her father Mr. Auld scolded her for “spoiling” the child with the gift of literacy, a gift that would make him think he was too good for slavery.
At this point, Douglass the small child understood that illiteracy was the slavemaster’s “great weapon” in helping “the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”
The slavemaster’s evil woke up Douglass to the fact that he needed to learn to read and write and whatever cost in order to save himself from the Sunken Place.
In the words of Douglass:
“What he dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.”
Without a teacher, Douglass gave food, usually his bread, to poor white children in exchange for their grammar and writing books; he found scraps of newspapers in the garbage and taught himself to read.
As an adult while living under the slavemaster Mr. Freeland, Douglass taught other slaves how to read and write and he saw how this gift of literacy gave his fellow slaves the longing to be free and at least one such slave did indeed escape slavery.
The Sunken Place Feature #8: Unable to remove the thought that you are enslaved, you regret your existence and wish you were dead.
Douglass was desperate to think of anything other than the horrid state of being a slave but the thought would not leave him and tormented him. He writes, “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.”
His only relief was hearing people talk about the need for the abolition of slavery.
The very word abolition captured Douglass’ imagination. He studied discarded newspapers to get a handle on what abolition meant and he learned that it meant the death of slavery.
He learned that an abolitionist was someone who championed the end of slavery through words, oratory, and deeds.
The Sunken Place Feature #9: To learn that the slavemasters who purported the strongest religious faith were the cruelest and most vicious
Douglass learned that while all slavemasters were cruel and evil, there was an extraordinary meanness attached to those who claimed religious piety; therefore, Douglass had to witness these pious slavemasters bloviating religious passages and larding kindness and generosity on their white guests during religious holidays while starving and beating the slaves with sadistic delight.
It was the religious slavemasters who would lacerate young slave women for up to five hours at a time.
One religious slavemaster knew a slave child had an injured hand from a childhood fire, yet beat her because she could not perform tasks in a timely manner.
The Sunken Place Feature #10: Being punished for looking intelligent
Many white people, especially slavemasters, had a special hatred and dislike for Douglass because his intelligence gave him a “city life” look that they found threatening. These masters said Douglass’s “uppity airs” had a “very pernicious effect” upon him and “ruined his good purpose” to be a slave. Douglass’ intelligence threatened his masters who gave him “severe whippings” just to keep him in line. Their objective was to “break” him and consign him to the Sunken Place; however, he resolved to be free and to free others thereby becoming the greatest American in recorded history.
The Sunken Place Feature #11: To be broken in body, soul, and spirit
Douglass observes that slavemaster Mr. Covey whipped him at least once a week and overworked and underslept him so badly that he was broken. “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”
He would watch ships sailing out of Chesapeake Bay and long to be a free man. These moments planted the seeds for his escape plans.
It should be noted that Mr. Covey beat Douglass and Douglass fought back and inflicted great pain on Covey and Covey’s assistant, and even though he was a slave for four more years, Douglass was never whipped again.
The Sunken Place Feature #12: Slavery is not merely physical bondage but a form of brainwashing
Douglass observes that slavery was a state of mind in which the slave had become content with his slavery and had lost the desire to be free. As Douglass writes:
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
***
Notes As I Reread Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Douglass has no birthday as masters want to erase the history and significance of black people. Erasure is a theme and so is Otherization.
Douglass was born of a white man and a black woman, a slave. He was separated from his mother when he was an infant, a common practice.
White masters procreated with black women slaves for pleasure and profit, Douglass observes.
The white master will sell these slaves so he doesn’t see them being whipped, children of his own blood.
As a small child, Douglass witnessed merciless, sadistic whippings and beatings.
This includes the beating of his Aunt Hester, a beautiful 15-year-old who was forbidden to have relations with black men to save herself for the master presumably. She violated the rule and was beaten mercilessly in front of Douglass.
Douglass observed that hearing slaves sing songs about their lot in life would do more “to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery” than reading volumes of books on the subject. The “ineffable sadness” in these songs often brought Douglass to tears, even decades later when he wrote his autobiography.
Slaves were fearful for telling the truth so they usually spoke well of their master and said they were being treated well, so they wouldn’t be sold to some even more hellish circumstance. They learned to be silent or speak little.
By the time we get to Chapter 6, Douglass has moved to Baltimore where the seeds are planted for him to find freedom. He meets his new mistress who is relatively kind for a white person. Sophia Auld taught Douglass the alphabet when he was twelve until her husband forbade her to give him additional lessons.
Somehow, Douglass knew learning how to read would help bring him to freedom.
Riya Shankar writes in his essay “Frederick Douglass and the Power of Literacy”: “He was enticed by his master’s fervent opposition to learning, realizing that a slave becoming literate was liberation from his master.” He would no longer be at the mercy of his master. Literacy would give him power to make a deeper sense of the world and have the tools to articulate that deeper sense. Slave masters lived in fear that their slaves would become literate. Forced illiteracy was a tool to oppress their slaves.
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One of the things that Douglass hated about slave masters was the disrespect they afforded his grandmother who lived in isolation from her family because her children and grandchildren were sold and dispersed throughout the land so far from her that she never got to see them.
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Douglass’ intelligence and experience in the city made him a threat to his masters. They resented Douglass’ intelligent bearing; he could not play the role of a dumb complaint slave; he was a tall muscular handsome man who exuded intelligence when he walked into a room. Masters hated him.
What his masters didn’t know is that he hated them more than they hated him; he knew eventually he would kill one of them and that would result in his death, so he started planning his escape.
Making an escape was dangerous because slave masters hired slaves to do false flag operations enticing slaves to escape so that the masters could punish or execute the conspirators. A slave planning an escape had to be extra careful and trust no one.
The turning point in Douglass’ life is when he retaliated against his master Mr. Covey and Douglass thought he would be killed for his punishment. But Covey was too ashamed to report Douglass and Douglass lived, but he knew eventually another fight would ensue and he would be killed. He knew he’d have to plan his escape.
Another thing about the fight changed Douglass. He knew he could no longer submit as a slave. He would always fight back. In his mind, he was already free.
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Black Panther
In recent years, there have been critics of teaching Jim Crow and racial injustice in the classroom. These critics claim that such teachings have degenerated into biased and extremist political ideology that is intended to indoctrinate students into an anti-American mindset with America painted as the unredeemable devil; that this anti-American mindset encourages helplessness and victimization, and that this mindset has corrupted educational institutions so that rather than teach critical thinking, they foster “Woke” political indoctrination. Write an essay that addresses the claim that the movie Black Panther presents a way of learning about racial injustice that avoids the aforementioned pitfalls because the movie embodies the importance of bearing witness to the truth, embracing individual self-agency to resist societal injustice, struggling to reach an Aspirational Self defined by loyalty, discipline, and strength, and championing the wisdom of the Ancients for our continual self-improvement.
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Glory Vs. The Lost Cause:
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