Ron Peters's Reviews > Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

This short book is a factual narrative by a former slave that helped fuel the abolitionist movement. Now that we have such an extensive body of African American literature and movies and television shows, it can be hard to grasp how unique and impressive an accomplishment this was when it first appeared, sixteen years before the American Civil War, and eighteen years before the Emancipation Proclamation. The book contains two introductions by well-known white abolitionists of his day, the story of his life, and an appendix in which Douglass explains that he is not anti-Christian, but that he fervently opposes the hypocritical Christianity espoused by slave owners.