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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
severe - the cost in medical expenses and hospitalization, the cost
in crime and prisons, the cost in special education, the cost in lost
productivity and in potentially brilliant minds who could help
solve the dilemmas besetting us.
Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery
to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of
freedom. But reading is still the path.
w
Frederick Douglass After the Escape
hen he was barely twenty, he ran away to freedom.
Settling in New Bedford with his bride, Anna Murray,
he worked as a common labourer. Four years later Douglass
was invited to address a meeting. By that time, in the North,
it was not unusual to hear the great orators of the day - the
white ones, that is - railing against slavery. But even many of
those opposed to slavery thought of the slaves themselves as
somehow less than human. On the night of 16 August 1841,
on the small island of Nantucket, the members of the mostly
Quaker Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society leaned forward
in their chairs to hear something new: a voice raised in
opposition to slavery by someone who knew it from bitter
personal experience.
His very appearance and demeanour destroyed the thenprevalent
myth of the 'natural servility' of African-Americans.
By all accounts his eloquent analysis of the evils of slavery was
one of the most brilliant debuts in American oratorical history.
William Lloyd Garrison, the leading abolitionist of the day, sat
in the front row. When Douglass finished his speech, Garrison
rose, turned to the stunned audience, and challenged them with
a shouted question: 'Have we been listening to a thing, a chattel
personal, or a man?'
'A man! A man!' the audience roared back as one voice.
342