SOURCE: "Frederick Douglass: Literacy and Paternalism," in Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass, edited by William L. Andrews, G. K. Hall & Co., 1991, pp. 120-32.

In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Sundquist examines Douglass's symbolic and rhetorical use of literacy and paternity—and the powers each represents—in My Bondage and My Freedom.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Douglass:

There have been more biographies of Douglass printed than of any other Afro-American, including the great Du Bois. . . . What is curious and somewhat puzzling about this range of over a dozen biographies is that, in the main, they repeat the same facts in pretty much the same order. At first thought, we can say that so many scholars write about Douglass because he was the first Black Representative Man and, along with Du Bois, perhaps one of the only two truly representative men of letters our people are privileged to...