Hey =)
Hier ist meine Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten Aspekte. Vielleicht hilft's ja jemandem.

“A Soul in Chains”
Frederick Douglass (one of the most important African-American abolitionists/ Sklavereigegener, who was born as a slave in Maryland and escaped to the North in 183

Content
1. Part: Douglass describes his life on Captain Anthony’s plantation and the cruelty of his
overseer Mr.Plummer
2. Part: At the age of six he was separated from his grand-mother and taken to Colonel
Lloyd’s plantation (including a large number of neighboring farms).
3. Part: 7 or 8 years old Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live with relatives of his old master,
the Aulds. Mrs. Auld started teaching him the ABC, but Mr. Auld forbade it and that’s why Douglass began learning it for himself by observing the writings of men with whom he worked and the help of white children in the neighborhood. With twelve years he read his first book “The Columbian Orator” that gave him a new perspective on slavery. But his education, that was getting larger and larger, just made him unhappy and realize that his chains.
4. Part: With 14 or 15 years he was forced to work on Auld’s brother’s plantation, but as he
couldn’t deal with Douglass, Douglass was rented to Mr. Covey, a cruel enslaver who
breaks his slave. This seems to succeed and Douglass looses his education. He even thinks of killing himself. It ends with him watching birds and envying them for their freedom.

Information you get
- There are many different sizes of plantations
- The overseer is often more cruel than the master
- Slaves are mistreated in many ways, e.g. whipping until blood flows and further
- If a misbehaves, becomes unmanageable or tries to run away, he’ll be sold to another planter (Plantagenbesitzer)
- The slaves receive eight pounds of pork or fish and one bushel (Schaufel, entspricht ca.35l) of corn meal per month and two coarse (grobe) linen shirts, a jacker, a pair of trousers (EINE Hose), a pair of stockings (Strümpfe) and a pair of shoes per year.
- Children, who aren’t able to work, just get two coarse linen shirts per year and if those failed, they have to go naked.
- They don’t have beds, just a coarse blanket which has to be shared
- They’ve got nearly no time after work for cooking and housework, that’s why they don’t get a lot of sleep. In the morning they’re waken up by a horn and if they don’t stand up immediately, they’ll be whipped again
- Slaves mustn’t be educated, because they would start thinking about their oppression then and wouldn’t accept it anymore --> Knowledge is a way out of oppression
- But knowledge also makes unhappy, because it makes them aware of their imprisonment. Douglass says “learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing”
- Slaves have to work under every weather condition
- Religion gives them hope