Echoes of Frederick Douglass, an African American Writer

Frederick Douglss' Narrative of the Life... is a crucial text to understand not only his life, but slavery, and the painful conditions in which a whole race lived for centuries. His book is not only a narrative, as the title puts it, but also an argument against slavery, written while most African Americans were unable to enjoy the equality and freedom preached by the American Declaration of Independence. Most slaves were denied an education (together with an identity, clothing, food, fair treatment, and other basic human rights). Yet, they developed a body of oral literature, in which music and songs were a central part. At the end of chapter 2 of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he makes a reference to slaves' singing and its meaning.

Those songs have survived, both as literature and as music, as a testimony to that hard life. In assignment 1, we will work with the echoes of that music, as reflected in a literary form (poems by Langston Hughes).