Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

In the years before the Civil War, how might the labor of enslaved people have been different depending on geographical location? What kind of labor do you think enslaved people did in Maryland, in particular?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may come to this autobiographical narrative with narrow notions of pre-war life set in the South, as images of plantations and labor in the cotton fields tend to be prevalent in film and books. Readers may not have considered life in other parts of the antebellum South and might be surprised to learn more about the Chesapeake area, with its maritime culture, oyster fishing, and urban trade. It also might be beneficial to guide student discussion regarding how enslaved labor was exploited to build its economy on all levels (not just in agriculture), as this narrative shows.

• This resource from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History explains the foundations for American slavery and provides thorough information to build context.
• This reference site from the National Museum of African American History & Culture’s Searchable Museum offers a comparative study of slavery in the Chesapeake and several other regions.