Knowledge

Luis Villarreal
8/10/13
Knowledge is the Path of Freedom
Knowledge has multiple meanings, such as: obtaining facts, principles of studying, investigation, and the truth. Freedom wasn’t given to any colored man, woman or child in the early and late 1800’s. Without the power of learning and knowledge that they were given, they might still be enslaved to this day.
Colored people that lived back then weren’t ever given the right to learn to read or write. They were only given the option to work. They weren’t ever taught how to read, because the white people thought they’d be corrupted and couldn’t work hard anymore. Like Fredrick Douglass, as a boy wasn’t taught to read or write and one had one job almost his whole life; to work as a slave. Without the knowledge of knowing of a free world or in that matter what free meant, they had no hope of trying to escape for freedom.
The colored people had many masters. Many fearful and others that cared, these who did get put with them would teach a thing a two about reading or writing. That opened opportunities for them, to escape from slavery and live up north where slavery was abolished. Fredrick Douglass was lucky and his masters’ wife, Sophia Auld started to teach him the alphabet even though it was against the law. With the little knowledge he obtained, opened a gate to freedom. He taught himself how to read by his white neighbors. He then learned how to write by looking at the writing of other men. With the obtain knowledge he knew that slavery wasn’t right and that there were more to hardship and fear.