Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

21
The Path to Freedom*
We must not believe the many, who say that only free
people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe
the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
Epictetus, Roman philosopher
and former slave, Discourses
Frederick Bailey was a slave. As a boy in Maryland in the
1820s, he had no mother or father to look after him. ('It is a
common custom,' he later wrote, 'to part children from their
mothers . . . before the child has reached its twelfth month.') He
was one of countless millions of slave children whose realistic
prospects for a hopeful life were nil.
What Bailey witnessed and experienced in his growing up
marked him forever: 'I have often been awakened at the dawn
of the day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of
mine, whom [the overseer] used to tie up to a joist, and whip
upon her naked back till she was literally covered with
blood . . . From the rising till the going down of the sun he was
cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the
field ... He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish
barbarity.'
The slaves had drummed into them, from plantation and pulpit
* Written with Ann Druyan.
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