Excerpt from The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (written by himself)

"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. . . .Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. . . . These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. . . . I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. . . . From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom."