In my sophomore literature class, I read a passage aloud from perhaps our best-known slave narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, in which Douglass characterizes ...

Yesterday, Carroll Remley Jr., the great-great-grandson of Hugh and Sophia Auld, and his wife, Elaine, sat on folding chairs about five rows back in the captain’s cabin, waiting to introduce ...

When Douglass was about 12 years old, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. However, her husband Hugh strongly disapproved as he felt that literacy encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom.

“Hugh Auld, Sophia's husband, instructed her not to teach Frederick Douglass how to read. He said it would spoil him as a slave,” said John Muller, of Lost History Associates.