Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

At the moment I'm reworking an essay I wrote last year about the ex-slave and abolitionistFrederick Douglass. My argument is that his title Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave reveals the paradox of the American slavery system in that someone could be both American (from a country that prides itself on being democratic, on capitalistic ideals of property ownership, and of being the home of the free) and Slave (a position of absolute submission without any rights). Here are the first two paragraphs, after the introduction, to this paper that I hope to present at Bishop's University's literary conference for English lit undergrads.

The status of Douglass' own parents exposed the absurdity of the dichotomy between "American" and "slave." His father was a white slaveholder therefore having all the rights of an American citizen. His mother, however, was a slave with no rights in American society. To further complicate the familial incongruities, his mother was most likely Douglass' father's slave. By introducing himself as an American slave, Douglass reveals the irrationality of such a system that would allow one's father to own one's mother. Through this persona, he also asserts that he should have the right to inherit his father's status, even though by law (established by white males to uphold the slave system) he inherits only the status of his mother."

"Frederick Douglass asserts his persona in the title of his autobiography, identifying himself to his readers as an "American Slave." The apparent oxymoron would shock his contemporary readers. It seemed impossible that a person could be both American: white, property-owner, free, rich, and proud and yet also slave: black, property, constrained, owning nothing, and humiliated. His choice of identifiers was deliberate. They displayed the inherent hypocrisies of American slavery. Douglass had been born in America, "the land of the free," the country that declared that "all men are created equal." Additionally, at the time he wrote his narrative, Douglass had attained freedom "in form" in the North, yet legally he continued to be a slave and could always be recaptured according to the Fugitive Slave Law (Douglass 78). He considered himself to be a "fugitive in slavery," not to be a "fugitive from slavery" (Fisch 208).

Get the book here:

Watch Danny Glover reciting one of Douglass' most famous speeches, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?.

(if you're lacking in time, watch from 3:40 - 5:21.)
Read it here.