Frederick Douglass, Part One, by Liam

There was a boy named Frederick. There were two parts of the farm. One was where all the working slaves were, and one was where the kids were that couldn’t work enough. Once they got old enough they moved to the other farm. Frederick hardly ever got to see his mom because he was not old enough to go to the working part where his mom was, and they were 12 miles apart.

One morning someone was waking him up. It was his mom. When we woke up he asked if she could stay this time and she said no, she had to go back before sunrise to work some more, and had only come to visit him.

The person that watched over all the kids was Frederick’s grandma. That morning before he went and did anything, he asked her why he hardly ever got to see his mother and she told him that it was 12 miles apart.

He went fishing with his grandma since she watching the children. A few days later, his grandma said, lets go on a walk, and they walked for miles. He didn’t know how long they had been walking. But they got to this place and they saw some little slave children playing and his grandma told him to go play with the children and then a little bit later he asked where she was. The child said that his grandma had left and he realized he was at the farm where all the slaves went when they were old enough to work and that he’d never see his grandma again. He started crying and was really sad.

He never got to visit his mom because no one had even told him that she was sick, and she died without him knowing.

So he worked and chased chickens out of the garden, and a little later he found out he was getting sold to this other guy because the guy’s son needed a little boy to play with. He was super happy and went and washed up in the river and got ready to go. He went out and he got on a ship. He was looking back at all his memories of his grandma and stuff,, but then he turned around and knew that there were going to be new adventures ahead.

He finally got there and they were super nice to him. After a while the owner’s son needed to learn the alphabet, so his mother taught him when the master wasn’t around and Frederick kept watching and the mom that was teaching said Frederick could learn, too. After a few days he knew the letters pretty well. The master walked in and said, “What are you doing?” and she said, “This slave, Frederick, can read as well as your son!” And the master said not to teach slaves to read or they’d want to be free more. So she stopped teaching him but he decided to teach himself since he already knew the alphabet and all its sounds. And so he kept learning and pretty soon he knew how to read.