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In Their Own Words: Slave Narratives Although some masters did teach their slaves to read as a way to Christianize them, most slave owners believed that teaching such skills was useless, if not dangerous. They assumed that slaves had no use for reading in their daily lives, and that literacy would make them more difficult to control, and more likely to run away. For those who managed to become literate and escape to freedom, the ability to write would spark the growth of a powerful genre of literature: the slave narrative. For the abolitionist movement, slave narratives would become tremendously effective weapons in attacking the institution of slavery. Despite the danger of physical punishment and the threat of capture for the authors of slave narratives, these men and women took great risks to empower themselves, and in some cases, achieved freedom. |
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Copyright
© 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript
Collections For
reference questions, send mail to:
rareref@cornell.edu |
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