Frederick Douglass had been born into slavery, he was separated from his parents very early on, and put to work from the second he could hold his own. The differences between Frederick Douglass’s and Olaudah Equiano’s childhoods are striking. He was always cold and hungry, never being given enough food or water, and constantly surrounded by the abuse of the older slaves around him, showing him what his future would look like when he was old enough to move to the fields. Douglass describes the remainder of his childhood, until he was old enough to work in the fields, as miserable. Douglass states that his father was a white man, but “by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers” (Douglass 31).
He describes his parentage as such “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant…I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life” (Douglass 30). He was born in Talbot county, Maryland, with no strong idea on what year he was born, but gives his best estimate to be about 1818. Equiano explains the lack of diversity in his community stating “I had never heard of a white men or Europeans, nor of the sea”(Equiano 12), and that his father was “one of those elders or chiefs” (Equiano 12) highlighting the life of privilege he held before he was kidnapped from him home country and put into slavery.įrederick Douglass was born into slavery. They lived a life of few luxuries, but never went without the essentials. He explains that they never went without, “As we live in a country where nature is prodigal of her favours, our wants are few and easily supplied” (Equiano 14). He describes his childhood with strong endearment, he speaks of his village as a community, explaining the celebrations, daily routines, and governing body with a strong positive tone.
Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in the village of Essaka, near modern day eastern Nigeria (Onyeoziri). The different stories they tell highlights the complexities of slavery and how all those enslaved held varying definitions of what it meant to be a slave. Though the two memoirs are both self-written slave narratives they tell varying accounts of their personal experiences as slaves. Both self-written memoirs were revolutionary first hand accounts of their experiences with slavery which went influenced governing bodies of the time and impacted generations to come. Nearly 100 years later in 1845 Frederick Douglass published his self narrative The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In 1759 Olaudah Equiano published his self-narrative The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equaino, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African.
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