Background Information
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave is an autobiographical account of a slave published in 1845, twenty years before the end of the Civil War and emancipation for all slaves. Douglass was the son of Harriet Bailey and his master, Captain Anthony. He spent the first seven years of his life in Maryland, living on Colonel Lloyd's plantation. This is where he first witnessed the atrocities of slavery. From a closet, he watched his Aunt Hester get stripped from the waist up, her arms tied above her as an overseer beat her until the blood ran down her back. This was the first of many horrifying scenes Douglass would face in his twenty-one years as a slave. The book takes the reader on his physical journey through the Baltimore area, to St. Michael's shipyard, and to his work as a field hand while simultaneously providing the reader with his philosophical analysis of slavery. The book ends with his escape to New York, of which he left out most details so he would not hurt the chances of other slaves from escaping similarly. The reader learns of his marriage to Anna Murray and the beginning of his long career as an orator.
The Roots of Racism
Before the students read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, they will read an excerpt from The Humblest May Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment and Abolition which summarizes, very concisely, some of the religious and scientific thinking that led to the institution of slavery and the perpetuation of racism and stereotyping upon slaves. I am including this excerpt because every year I teach this book my students ask me what Douglass means when he says, "…God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is not right." 4 In order to explain this I usually give a brief oral explanation. Through my research for this unit, I found a great excerpt from the above-mentioned book that will be used as another reading component for this unit. The scientific argument described those of African descent as inferior to whites in reason, imagination, and creativity; incapable of deep emotions of love and mourning, inherently lazy and hot-tempered. 5 This information is necessary for the study of rhetorical devices that will be discussed later in this unit, mainly Douglass's need to downplay his abilities at the beginning of his speeches. (See discussion/journal questions under the heading Rhetoric.) In terms of the religious argument, the Scripture was misinterpreted by whites, leading to the enslavement of Africans. "A commonly cited biblical argument involved Noah's curse on Canaan, the descendants of his son Ham, whom proslavery writers maintained were Africans." 6 Samuel Cartwright, a Louisiana doctor, argued that Africans shared the physical and mental characteristics of Canaan, therefore making those of African descent cursed to serve the whites, "the progeny of Ham's brother Japheth." 7
Chapter I of Douglass's Narrative, discusses the implications of the new class of mixed-blood slaves, an outcome of the rape of slave women by their masters. Douglass is trying to illustrate that this class of slaves, of which he is included, is a "very different-looking" class of people from those brought to America from Africa. Therefore, the religious argument "that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right," cannot hold true. 8 Students will read this passage from Chapter I and pages 25-26 from Bacon's book and will then discuss with a partner the connections between the religious argument and Douglass's rhetoric about the new class of slaves. What "facts" were stated in Cartwright's argument? Why does Douglass argue that the "facts" cannot be true? What is Douglass's philosophy on the religious aspect of pro-slavery rhetoric? Instead of just giving notes on the historical information, students can also compare the misinterpretation of the Scripture noted above to the episode in Chapter IX of the Narrative when Thomas Auld, his master, whipped a slave woman until the blood dripped, and quoted the Scripture in justification of his action: "He that knoweth his Master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." 9 I usually use this example to teach a mini-lesson on literal versus figurative analysis of text; the information in Bacon's book will serve as a great supplement to this discussion.
Rhetoric
Voice is a very abstract concept and I believe it will be difficult for my students to understand Frederick Douglass's use of voice and rhetoric if I do not first introduce several key vocabulary words and concepts that are probably unfamiliar to them.
When teaching students persuasive writing, I focus on the differences between fact and opinion, the use of facts to support one's opinion, and the relationship developed between the writer and the audience, focusing on how to effectively create a call to action for the reader. Students often write about how much they want to see change occur and why they feel change is necessary, but lack the ability to add fact or philosophy to their writing to make it truly persuasive. Rhetoric, simply speaking, is the ability to make a strong argument by presenting facts and opinions as persuasively as possible. Douglass's Narrative demonstrates the rhetorical power of stories, imagery, and metaphors, a technique mirrored in his letters and speeches. Student will be able to use the types of persuasive techniques read or heard in this unit to foster the development of their own voice in writing.
My goal is that students will be able to identify different rhetorical strategies in texts studied in this unit, specifically, combining fact with philosophy and developing trust, or credibility with an audience in an effort to increase their skills in persuasive writing. To introduce rhetoric, I will ask students to read the first paragraph of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and ask them which words, phrases, or sentences persuade the reader to disagree with the dehumanization of slavery upon the slave. In this passage, Douglass employs a rhetorical strategy used during the Abolition Movement. I will call attention to the sentences about his age: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age…I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived the same privilege." 10 Here, Douglass combined a personal experience with his philosophy; he tells the reader he was deprived of knowing his birth date and then goes on to express his dissatisfaction of this form of dehumanization in the institution of slavery. Students will be asked: Why is it important to combine fact and philosophy, or opinion, in a persuasive speech? Is one component effective without the other? Why or why not? As an orator, Douglass faced the complications of being asked by white abolitionists to speak about his experiences as a slave while also being told to leave out his philosophy about the institution of slavery; although the white men were abolitionists, they were still guided by their own prejudices. As a former slave, Douglass was to speak only as a storyteller who experienced first-hand the ills of slavery. Although Douglass was a respected orator in the Abolition Movement, society still viewed him as intellectually inferior to whites. Therefore, it was deemed inappropriate for a former slave to share his philosophy about the institution of slavery - his role was to simply provide the facts of his experience, leaving the philosophy of slavery to his fellow white abolitionists.
Students will need to develop trust with their audience. Why should the audience trust you? Why are you a credible source? In a speech delivered in 1843, Douglass begins, "I have myself been a slave, and I do not expect to awaken such an interest in the minds of this intellectual assembly, as those have done who spoke before me." 11 In order to gain someone's trust, a commonality must be established between the two parties. The white audiences Douglass had to address might have asked themselves, Why should I trust you, a former slave? By deferring to his white audience, he was using a "nineteenth-century oratorical convention" that was used to "establish rapport with his audiences." 12 African American rhetors constantly had to overcome the stereotype that they were inferior to whites intellectually and as orators. By deferring to their audience's expectations of their inferiority, they actually granted themselves rhetorical authority; rapport was established. This strategy allows marginalized rhetors to negotiate the obstacles imposed upon them by using the rhetoric of an "inferior" addressing a "superior." Douglass challenges his audience to look beyond this hierarchy in nineteenth-century America and pressed his audience to grant him authority to persuade. 13
For the texts mentioned above I will have students create a T-chart; one column will record all facts stated by Douglass and the other column will list his philosophies, or ideas. Students will be asked to highlight words that reveal his philosophy. I do a very similar activity to elicit from them the difference between fact and opinion in non-fiction text by asking them to highlight opinion, or persuasive words in a non-fiction text. The highlighter will become a key player in your unit as students begin to search for rhetorical devices in Douglass's texts.
When teaching my students about rhetoric, I will provide them with the simple definition mentioned earlier; once they can identify how it is used I will introduce them to the more complex ideas described above. My reason for identifying the connections between the speaker and the audience is to enhance their own persuasive writing - keeping in mind their relationship to their audience. This will be reinforced once they begin writing their persuasive speeches. I will keep this list of the characteristics of rhetoric on a poster in the front of the classroom so students can always refer to it when evaluating text and creating their own voice in writing activities. The previous example will lend itself to the instruction of a more detailed description of rhetoric. In Rhetoric, Aristotle describes three means of persuasion: pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos arouses an emotional response in the audience, logos is the logical formation of an argument, and ethos is the character of the speaker as portrayed in the speech itself (whether in the written word or in speech). 14 My students will probably be able to understand the meaning of pathos most easily because it directly relates to them - creating the mood for the reader. My students have been predisposed to speakers such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou, whose voices clearly elicit strong emotional responses from their listeners. In Book II of Rhetoric, Aristotle analyzes persuasive techniques in greater detail by identifying phronesis, practical wisdom; aríte, good moral character; and eunoia, goodwill toward the audience. 15 Persona is another characteristic in rhetoric, meaning "theatrical mask," or more contemporarily, one's "role" in writing. 16 Persona will be easy for my students to identify with because we do a lot of "persona" writing in poetry where students have to create a persona and write from his/her/its point of view. As a teacher I regularly incorporate the concepts of pathos, logos, ethos and persona in my lessons on how to enhance persuasive writing. Through my research for this seminar on voice, however, I have been able to think more clearly about how to approach these ideas in my classroom. Identifying and developing pathos, logos, and ethos in writing will become part of a pre-writing activity for a persuasive writing assignment; students can list their "qualifications" for each of the three techniques in order to make a deep connection to their specific audience.
Frederick Douglass examined the relationship between the written word, the reader and the subject when he posed the questions, "Why is it that all the reports of contentment and happiness among the slaves at the South come to us upon the authority of the slaveholders, or (what is equally significant), of slaveholders' friends? Why is it that we do not hear from slaves directly?" 17 To begin discussion of why rhetoric, text, and speech were essential to the Abolition Movement, I will pose questions to my students as a warm-up journal: What is the importance of narrative writing as a primary source? How can society insure an unbiased documentation of history? In a letter to John T. Bartlett, Robert Frost states: "The best place to get the abstract sound of sense is from voices behind a door that cuts off the words." 18 My seminar leader, Dr. Langdon Hammer, shared his interpretation of this concept during our seminar, stating: "In a sense, everything we read is behind a door; we can't see the people talking to us on the page." 19
His suggestion resonated with me as I began to develop my unit on the voices of emancipation. The idea is that what we read on paper is always muffled, to a degree, because we are not hearing the words spoken to us. Some words are left up to our "imagining ear," another Frost metaphor, which allows us to bring our own experience to the words we hear on the page. 20 (I explain the mini-lesson on teaching the "imagining ear" in the Activities section of this unit). This rings so true for African American men during the Abolition Movement, whose voices were either silenced or edited by white men in power. The power of voice is described in an 1850 speech by Douglass in Rochester, New York: "There comes no voice from the enslaved, we are left to gather his feelings by imagining what ours would be, were our souls in his soul's stead." 21 In a way, Douglass is referring to the "imagining ear" as he explains his frustration that the true story of slavery cannot be told without the voices of those oppressed by slavery, not by the oppressors. If it were not for Douglass's Narrative, contributions by former slaves to The Liberator and other abolition propaganda, history would be interpreted only through the ear of slaveholders, altering the sounds of slavery.
Influences of Rhetoric
As the unit progresses, students will begin to analyze the people, events, and circumstances in their lives that influence them as writers. In developing voice, students will have to reflect on how they came to be the person they are today as well as contemplate what they see in their future. I will ask students: What sounds, sights, tastes, smells have affected your life? What are your strengths? How can you use your strengths as a rhetorical device in developing your voice? Frederick Douglass became a leading orator by listening to the sounds of slavery, the sounds of preachers, and the sounds of freedom. His rhetorical power emerges from the storytelling he was exposed to as a slave, a model for narration as a form of persuasion that does not depend on the white audience's perceptions of African American orators, but on the rhetorical traditions of African Americans. 22 He was also influenced by African American and white preachers whose sermons helped create the dramatic voice and voice of authority so resonant in his speeches.
My students will read his speech to the ships on the Chesapeake Bay in Chapter X. "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave?" 23 When I read this passage (the above is only a small excerpt) I hear the voice of a preacher speaking as well as the voice of a parishioner questioning the existence or power of his God. The tone of this passage changes drastically from beginning to end; a very angry and hopeless tone in the beginning gives way to a hopeful and forgiving tone at the end. In order to assess the student's understanding of the change in tone of Douglass's voice, I will have them highlight the emotion words like hottest hell, confined in bands of iron, turbid waters, misery to support their answer. In reference to Frost's concept of the "imagining ear" I will ask students: What voice(s) do you hear in this passage? I hear a parishioner asking a preacher for guidance and advice on how to cope with the evils of slavery; they might hear the voice of the ship, the collective voice of the slaves, or just the voice of Douglass. In the past I have also asked students to create a "T" chart. One column lists his realities and the second lists his dreams. We reference this list as the book progresses and use it in our discussion of his physical versus psychological journey.
Letter Writing - Intimate and Public
A letter written by Frederick Douglass to Thomas Auld, his former slave master, was published in The Liberator on the ten year anniversary of his freedom. In this letter he alludes to at least six different events or circumstances in his Narrative; this will provide a great opportunity to have students read excerpts of both texts and compare/contrast his role as a writer, the audience to whom he was writing, the format, and tone. The intimate nature of a letter is challenged here because it was published in a newspaper. In both the Narrative and the letter to Thomas Auld, Douglass reveals the private details of his enslavement as well as expressing the public focus of the evils of slavery. 24 Students will be able to compare the ways in which this is accomplished in both texts. The letter provides insight into his role as an orator and can be used as a link to the lessons on his speeches that will be mentioned later in this unit.
In the following paragraphs, I am highlighting the six events that Douglass writes about in his letter to Thomas Auld. As we read the Narrative together in class, I will write these quotes on the board as they fit in the readings. The students will be asked to examine the difference in tone between the letter and the Narrative as well as the use of private and public information in both texts. As an assessment, I will ask the students to write a brief narrative (one page long) about an emotional time in their life. When they finish the narrative they will be asked to write a letter to someone who was a part of the emotional event they wrote about in their narrative. Students will have to focus on their role as a writer - the more private, personal writing of a narrative versus the more direct, perhaps even confrontational tone of the letter. Below are the quotes from the letter that will be used in our discussion of the Narrative.
"…[Y]on bright sun beheld me a slave - a poor, degraded chattel - trembling at the sound of your voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute." 25 This quote will be coupled with a quote from the Narrative: "I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without remedy. I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast." 26
Regarding his realization of his circumstances as a young slave, he states in his letter, "I heard some of the old slaves talking of their parents having been sold from Africa by white men, and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once…made me for the first time acquainted with the fact, that there were free States as well as slave states. From that time, I resolved that I would some day run away." 27 This quote from the Narrative best echoes that sentiment: "The readings of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery…The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers." 28
"You remember when I used to make seven or eight, or even nine dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings also." The part in the Narrative when he discusses "earning his time" is viewed as a climax to some of my students. This is when Douglass decides that he will attempt to run away again, leaving the reader assured that he will succeed this time because he is so much closer to free states.
In reference to his voice as an abolitionist, he speaks of it in a more humble manner in the Narrative than he does in the letter, where he speaks with great authority. "I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery - as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy - and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance. 29 The idea of using men is reversed here; Douglass was now using Thomas Auld to teach the world about the injustices of slavery. In this letter Douglass again addressed the private man and the public audience.
I think it will be interesting to compare the part of the Narrative (Chapter X) when Douglass and several other slaves try to escape, only to be caught by their master, to this excerpt from the letter. Students can see how angry Douglass feels toward Thomas Auld and how his voice differs from the voice they hear in the Narrative. "I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip…[you] caused this right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied to my left, and my person dragged like a beast in the market… for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your possession. At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother in bondage." 30 Here, Douglass is not only commenting on his freedom, but the act of writing the letter is itself an affirmation of his emancipation. He is "out of man's hand," emancipated from Thomas Auld in the greatest sense of the word.
When I ask my students what part of the book stands out in their mind, many students reference the part when his grandmother is cast to the woods to live the rest of her life alone, without anyone to care for her. This part upsets Douglass, and my students, because she has given her whole life to caring for the slave children, as well as the master's children, only to be tossed aside when she is no longer an able-bodied worker. In his letter, Douglass addresses Thomas Auld about this: "…my dear old grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse, to die in the woods - is she still alive? Write and let me know all about them [his siblings too]. If my grandmother be still alive, she is of no service of you, for by this time she must be nearly eighty years old…send her to me at Rochester, or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of my life to take care of her in her old age." 31 The fact that Douglass was asking Auld to write back and to send his grandmother to him in New York is a bold move for a former escaped slave and it cannot be ignored. Remember that this letter was published in the Liberator, so imagine the embarrassment of Auld as he is almost being mocked and dared by Douglass as he asks Auld to send his grandmother to him.
Speech Delivery- The Abolitionist and Orator
This segment of the unit will focus on how to address different audiences in one's writing. Students have already examined rhetorical devices used in an autobiography and letters, and will now be able to analyze how voice may differ in another genre - speeches. Students will be asked: In what ways is a speech different than an autobiography? How does a letter, either public or private, differ from a speech? Where is it easier to hide behind a "mask," in a narrative, letter, or speech? My students are often interested in Douglass's role as a writer and an activist in the Abolition Movement, which is only briefly discussed in the last few sentences of the Narrative. This unit will enable them to follow his journey through the letter to Thomas Auld, which provides a great contrast to Douglass's own mild description of his new role as abolitionist and orator at the end of the book.
Douglass states in the Narrative: "I felt strongly urged to speak, and was at the same time much urged…It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down." 32In order for Frederick Douglass to establish a rapport with his audience he had to address his place in society - a former slave amongst white abolitionists. I will ask students which characteristic of rhetoric was used here. They will be able to pinpoint ethos, as Douglass discusses his uneasiness in speaking to the white crown, lending to his credibility as the speaker. 33 In order to build credibility as a reliable speaker, one must connect to his audience by building a trustworthy relationship. It is important to note to students that although Douglass stated, "I felt myself a slave," he is not viewing himself as inferior to his audience; he is actually using rhetoric to placate his white audience in order to connect with them. Douglass often opened his speeches by downplaying his ability, a common feature in the rhetoric of other African American abolition speakers of his time. 34 This apparent "nonchalance or self-deprecation was a nineteenth-century oratorical convention to establish rapport with his audiences." 35
Before I reveal the reason for his rhetoric stated above, I will ask my students: What are some possible reasons why would former slaves, men who wanted to persuade others to believe that slavery is inhumane and unjust, portray themselves as inferior to their white audience? This rhetorical strategy of downplaying one's intellect and skill to appease the audience's expectations of the speaker's inadequacy is an example of how African American orators had to essentially wear a mask to placate the prejudices of their white audience. To facilitate this discussion in class, I will ask students: When have you had to wear a "mask"? In American society, past or present, what groups or individuals had to wear a "mask?" Why? How did that make you feel? How do you think Douglass felt when he had to wear a "mask?"
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