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Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write

Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write

Read Learning to Read and Write and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.

1. Why did Mistress Hugh stop teaching Douglass to read and write?

Douglass found another teacher, a black clergyman.

She became too ill to continue.

She was threatened by the local townspeople.

Her husband told her to cease with the boy’s instruction.

2. What was Douglass’s most successful plan for learning to read?

He learned to read labels he found on dry goods in his mistress’s pantry.

He converted many of the young white boys he met into his “teachers.”

He consulted the dictionary whenever he came across a new word.

He asked Master Thomas to help him.

3. What word related to slavery caught Douglass’s special attention?

miscegenation

abolitionist

Quakerism

emancipation

4. For what did Douglass sometimes envy his fellow slaves?

their courage

their stupidity

their families

their religion

5. What did the author learn at the Durgin and Bailey’s shipyard?

how to write the alphabet

how to read

how to build ships

how to barter for books