HomeQuotesFrederick Douglass
Leadership
From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom... Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter VII, 1845
Leadership
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What this means, and why it matters to a father

The pivotal literacy passage of the Narrative: Douglass overhears his enslaver forbid his wife from teaching the boy to read—and realizes that learning is the very key to freedom.

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