My Bondage and My Freedom

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nations enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. My Bondage and My Freedom is Douglasss masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains.

This classic is revisited with a new introduction and annotations by celebrated Douglass scholar David W. Blight. Blight situates the book within the politics of the 1850s and illuminates how My Bondage represents Douglass as a mature, confident, powerful writer who crafted some of the most unforgettable metaphors of slavery and freedom—indeed of basic human universal aspirations for freedom—anywhere in the English language.

 

"David Blight has produced a fine edition of Douglass' second autobiography. This is an essential work in African-American and American history, and displays Douglass' developing strength as a writer and political leader."—Richard Slotkin, Wesleyan University

"With scorching rhetoric, my heroic ancestor rails against the inhumanity of slavery while upholding the tenets of liberty with poetic elegance. His prophetic words, as relevant today as they were over a century ago, will inspire readers to become leaders in the mold of Frederick Douglass. In this new edition, David Blight presents a thorough examination of my great-great-great grandfather's life from his enslavement on the eastern shore of Maryland to his emergence as a revolutionary leader at the center of a national crisis over the future of slavery."—Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives

“David Blight's graceful introduction provides the essential historical context, public as well as private, and helps us appreciate how Douglass's great book managed to be at once a piercing polemic, an extraordinary act of memory, and a masterpiece of American prose.”—James Oakes, City University of New York

David W. Blight is professor of American history and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition