Douglass explains that “slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.” Why would masters care whether enslaved folks know something as simple as their own birthdays? Because ignorance enslaves and knowledge is power.ĭouglass knows his mother’s name, Harriet Bailey, but they were separated when he was an infant, he recounts, “before I knew her as my mother.” He’d heard his father was a white man, possibly his master, “but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing the means of knowing was withheld from me.” Many people, including orphans and adopted children, may not know about their own parents. Such self-ignorance was by design, a strategy of slaveholders for dehumanizing the people they enslaved. He writes, “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.”
Even basic biographical details that most take for granted-his birthday and his father’s identity-were kept from him. KNOW YOURSELF: “KNOWLEDGE MAKES A MAN UNFIT TO BE A SLAVE”įrederick Douglass begins his 1845 memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, with a surprising admission: how little he knows about himself.
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