The minstrel acts, even when anti-slavery in sentiment, presented black people as childlike and unsophisticated. This was in striking contrast to how contemporary audiences reported their encounters with Frederick Douglass. Many accounts noted his obvious intelligence and evident learning, attributes which were cited on occasion as proof that when freed from slavery and given the gifts of education and moral instruction black people were able to demonstrate their intellectual capacities and potential for refinement. Douglass played on the gulf between his intellectual abilities and the
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