Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Statesman | 5 Minute Video
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, but through his own heroic efforts became one of the most influential advocates for freedom in American history. His journey, a tale both agonizing and inspiring, should be known by everyone. Timothy Sandefur, author of “Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man,” guides us through Douglass’ amazing life.
This video was made in partnership with the American Battlefield Trust. Learn more about Frederick Douglas at http://bit.ly/2Zf0sSq
Donate today to PragerU! http://l.prageru.com/2eB2p0h
To view the script, sources, quiz, and study guides, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/frederick-douglass-from-slave-to-statesman
VISIT PragerU! https://www.prageru.com
Join Prager United to get new swag every quarter! http://l.prageru.com/2c9n6ys
Join PragerU’s text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru
Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful.
FOLLOW us!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prageru
Twitter: https://twitter.com/prageru
Instagram: https://instagram.com/prageru/
PragerU is on Snapchat!
JOIN PragerFORCE!
For Students: http://l.prageru.com/2aozfkP
JOIN our Educators Network! http://l.prageru.com/2aoz2y9
Script:
He was one of the most revered Americans of the 19th century. His story of personal triumph—humble origins to national prominence—is equal to or greater than that of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, or Ulysses Grant. He never became a politician, but he spoke to presidents as an equal.
His name is Frederick Douglass.
Born a slave, Douglass never knew the exact date of his birth, never knew his father, never saw his mother after the age of seven. This wasn’t uncommon at the time. Slave owners often made a point of separating families. Breaking family bonds increased dependence on the slave owner.
Discipline was maintained through simple fear and destroying self-esteem. A slave could be punished for not working hard enough, but also for working too hard—or even for suggesting labor-saving ideas. Douglass experienced all of this and rebelled against it.
As a teenager, he taught himself to read. This created a desire for freedom. When his owner discovered this disturbing development, he sent him to live with a local farmer, Edward Covey, who made extra money breaking the will of unruly slaves.
Covey beat Douglass every week for six months, often for no reason. And it worked. Soon young Frederick gave up all hope of being free. “The dark night of slavery closed in upon me,” he later wrote.
That all changed one hot August day in 1835. When Covey struck him, Douglass fought back. Where he found the courage, he couldn’t say. The two men struggled until Covey stumbled away exhausted. Covey never laid a hand on Douglass again.
The teenage slave had stood up for himself. He considered this the most important lesson of his life. Years later, he would tell this story when urging black men to enlist in the Union Army to fight the Confederacy. “You owe it to yourself,” he said. “You will stand more erect . . . and be less liable to insult. . . . You [will be] defending your own liberty, honor, manhood, and self-respect.”
Douglass made his escape from slavery in 1838, slipping into the North disguised as a U.S. Navy sailor. At any point along the rail journey, his flimsy cover could have been blown. Displaying a confidence he didn’t actually feel, he bluffed his way past suspicious conductors and runaway-slave hunters.
Once in the North, he joined the radical abolitionist movement and was quickly recognized as a powerful speaker and writer. The movement’s leader, William Lloyd Garrison, burned the Constitution at his July 4th speeches. In Garrison’s view, it legally protected slavery and was therefore irredeemable.
But Douglass came to reject that. He believed that the Constitution was fundamentally opposed to slavery. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” Douglass said, “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”
Not surprisingly, Douglass was a strong supporter of the Republican Party—the new anti-slavery party—and of the Union cause in the Civil War.
Initially, he had doubts about Abraham Lincoln. He didn’t think Lincoln was truly committed to ending slavery. But he warmed up to the Great Emancipator as the conflict wore on. Lincoln, on the other hand, always admired Douglass. “Here comes my friend Douglass,” Lincoln said when he saw him at his second inaugural in 1865.
The Union victory ended slavery. But as the Democratic Party re-established itself in the South in the 1870s and ‘80s, a new kind of racial oppression arose in the form of Jim Crow laws and, even worse, widespread lynching.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/frederick-douglass-from-slave-to-statesman
source
Who else is here bc of a teacher?
Lincoln was a dictator that did not care about the constitution.
He didn’t know his father? Come on
Gotta say, love how the comments are turned off in some of these videos. Almost like they don't want anyone calling them out of their propaganda.
PragerU, The whitewashing of history and slavery.
https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=AbQyJlioRQn9SrMH
No, it wasn't learning to read that revealed to Douglass how to get out of slavery. His master stopped his wife from teaching him to read, and told his wife that if Douglass learned to read, "it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave." He had often wondered why he was a slave and others were not, and the harsh words of his master, Hugh Auld, revealed to him an important way to get away from being a slave: education. So he was motivated to learn to read and write.
Why does PragerU 100% misrepresent what Douglas said about slavery on their kids channel that doesn't allow comments? THOU SHALT NOT LIE
This is why you get cursed out in public, Mr Prager. You are lying to children who don't know any better.
Slaves did not benefit from slavery.
2:11 in 1838 both Virginia and West Virginia were the same state: Virginia. You could have at least tried to get that correct on your map. You need to do a better job with your historical maps.
The platforms of Democratic party and the Republican party were vastly different than what they are today.
“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.” – Frederick Douglass
Noticed you left that out
Consider watching the Crash Course Black History video about Fredrick Douglass to get the real story about Douglass. Better yet read his narrative instead of this very cherry picked and skewed look at the life a great American hero. Read his speech “What To A Slave Is the Fourth of July” to see for yourself what Douglass’ stance on America was during his lifetime!
“What to the slave, is the Fourth of July?”
-Frederick Douglas
Is the Narrator Black? Why do white people feel like they can recite Black History. I would submit that Prager have a Black person recite Black American History because they can relate to the history. I'm not concerned about how people feel about the truth but that the truth is given. White people started racism in America and they have a Christian duty to stop it and repent to God for their wicked ways.😁
Youd be calling him a woke marxist if he were alive today
PragerU is racist trash
PragerU is selling white supremacy to children
This video would be okay, if you actually had the decency and honesty to mention that "glorious liberty document" comes from Douglass' speech "What to the Slave is your 4th of July?" in which he said, quote:
"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."
And… Fast forward:
"In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it."
Shame on you.
…I guess PragerU forgot about Frederick Douglass speech known as "What to the slave is the fourth of july"?
And it begs the question why every predominantly black community doesn’t have a street or school named after this man. Why black children don’t know who he is. Why no one has considered changing the $10 or $20 bill to his likeness. Why black America does not laud his name at speeches.
A Hero of mine my whole life . What a Man ! Studying civil war I found him. My Great Great Grandfather was a Prussian General hired by Lincoln. Stayed fathered seven sons in St.Louis. Douglas is worth Studying reading about . Man's, Man.
Wow. What a man!
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Douglass, once a slave & a radical revolutionary leftist, said that capitalism reduced the worker to "wage slavery". He wanted to abolish ALL forms of slavery.
Interesting video like seriously, Frederick Douglass is an inspirational man. I as a Black Australian man of East African Somali descent love the Black American community. I myself have no enslaved and segregated ancestors because they were East African Somali people who were never captured or kidnapped or sold into slavery because they came from a strong empire. I am the proud son of two East African Somali immigrant parents both my father and my mother plus my paternal uncle which they all successfully immigrated to Australia in the mid 1990s escaping the Somali Civil War which devastated the country. My family and I still live there today. I love Australia because it is so peaceful and relaxing here plus I enjoy my life here in this incredible country. If I was a descendant of an amazingly tough enslaved and segregated ancestors who went through so much suffering I would always honour them plus remember them. I would never disgrace or forget what they had to experience the painful torment of racism. My heart goes out to all the oppressed Black people in the past that had go through the African Tribal Warfare, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Chattel Slavery, the Colonial Wars, the Domestic Slave Trade, the American Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan Racial Terror Lynchings, the Race Riots, Convict Leasing, Jim Crow Segregation, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Redlinings, the Inner City Gang Violence, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, the Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System, and Private Prison Abuse. In the United States of America today there is still Inner City Gang Violence, Police Brutality, Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System, and Private Prison Abuse so depressing. America needs a huge criminal justice reform, economic reform, gun control reform, immigration reform, police reform, political reform, and prison reform. I send my love plus support all the way from Lakemba, New South Wales, Australia. To all my fellow human brothers and sisters around the world, always remember be genuine & take care of one another.
Frederick Douglass is literally my idol. I don't know of anyone else in history that I would want to have a conversation with more.
I tried to model my life after him. I joined the army when I was 17 and I taught myself how to code when I got out 8 years later.
Literacy is the pathway to freedom
What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in a room with Lincoln and Douglass. The deep conversations and stories they must have had together.
you say the n word
"Freedom depends on three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge [ammo] box." -Frederick Douglass. He understood that the people who need the 2nd Amendment most are those who are at the greatest risk of attack by tyranny and oppression. People who want minority rights should support the 2nd Amendment, since the minorities are often first to suffer when self-defense is denied to them.
He challenged America to have the moral courage to live up to their own ideals rather than continuing to fall short of them.
“Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.” – Frederick Douglass on wage labor & by extension on capitalism