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Raz Ls37 Frederickdouglassforeverfree CLR
Raz Ls37 Frederickdouglassforeverfree CLR
Forever Free
A Reading A–Z Level S Leveled Book Frederick Douglass:
Forever Free
Word Count: 1,079
•Y
S•V
Written by Jennifer McStotts
Forever Free
Illustration Credits:
Back cover, pages 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11: © Learning A–Z/Jen Betton
Table of Contents
Bread for Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bread for Lessons
Born a Slave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Eight-year-old Frederick Douglass took a
loaf of bread from the kitchen and slipped out
Escape! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
the back door to run errands. Frederick was
Writing and Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 a slave, but he knew he had more to eat than
some boys in his neighborhood. So he traded
Land of the Free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
them bread for something he wanted even
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 more—an education.
A Railroad
for Runaways
A secret group of people
organized to help runaway
slaves in the 1800s. This
network came to be called safe house in Ripley, Ohio
the Underground Railroad.
Places with food, clothing, and shelter were called safe
houses or stations. Because many runaways traveled on
foot, people helping the slaves—known as conductors or
Speaking to audiences years later, stationmasters —tried to provide a station every fifteen
Frederick would say, “I appear before you miles.
this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this Frederick Douglass stayed in safe houses when he
first escaped. He himself later became a stationmaster in
head, these limbs, this body from my master
Rochester, New York, helping some slaves escape to Canada.
and ran off with them.”
To prove he had been a slave, Douglass When Douglass returned to the United
wrote an autobiography. Narrative of the Life States in 1848, he founded a newspaper.
of Frederick Douglass was published in 1845. He also wrote thousands of speeches and
Critics said that the book, like Douglass, editorials calling for an end to slavery.
was fake: no slave could write so well, they “I expose slavery in this country,” wrote
argued. Yet the book was a huge success and Douglass, “because to expose it is to kill it.
convinced many people that a slave could Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness
have a great mind. to whom the light of truth is death.”