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Born Without a Birthday
Douglass opens with what slavery withheld from him at the start — a recorded birthdate, a stable home with his mother, and any real knowledge of his father — and describes the first act of violence against an enslaved person that he witnessed as a child.
Denial of birth records to enslaved peopleSeparation from his mother, Harriet BaileyIntroduction to Colonel Lloyd's plantationFirst witnessed whipping of an enslaved woman