Students in Ms.White's class are waiting in the classroom patiently for the bell to ring. It was test day and the students at Hamilton Middle knew what that meant: Sit at your desk quietly and wait for the teacher to give you further instruction. To their surprise, Ms. White stood at the front of the classroom with a curious face and asked a simple question. "What are some problems middle -schoolers your age face everyday?"

The students were perplexed. They've never been asked this before. Ms.White chuckled at the puzzled faces her students were making. "I'll give you guys a few minutes."

After a few minutes of thinking, hand after hand shot up. Mrs. White smiled and scanned the class for someone to call on. "Sally, go ahead and tell the class what you think." Sally lifted her head and called out "Bullying!" Mrs. White nodded. "Nava, how about you?"

Nava looked up. "Self Worth?" Mrs. White clapped her hands with excitement. "Yes! Yes! Yes!; self worth!" Nava looked confused. "What does this have to with history?" Mrs. White chuckled. "Everything... come around class, come around.

"Have you children ever heard of Frederick Douglass?"

Marcus's hand shot up. "Yeah, who hasn't? He was once a slave and escaped to the north to become what he's so famous for: being an abolitionist. Duh!" The class laughed as Marcus sat back down.

Ms. White gestured the "be quiet" signal to the class. "Thank you Marcus. You are one hundred percent correct. But did you know that in order to do what he did he had to realize something that most middle schoolers have trouble finding nowadays?"

Marcus shook his head.

"Self Worth!" Nava blurted out.

"Exactly," Mrs. White said.

"As the story goes, Frederick Douglass was a slave physically; but what many don't know is that he was a slave in bondage mentally too.

Sun up to sun down, sun up to sun down, sun up to sun down. Hours on top of hours, on top of hours. Frederick along with many other slaves spent all of their time working for cruel slave masters who gave them nothing but scraps to eat and scraps to wear. The cruelest of these men was Mr.Covey. A slave breaker who "broke" slaves from their eager and optimistic mentality."

"After several months spent with Covey, Frederick went from a spirited man with goals to escape slavery; to a man whose spirit was loss, any self worth demolished, and whose goals to escape slavery vanished before his eyes. Any time he would try to become optimistic he was only knocked down both physically and mentally and was put back in his place. Frederick was pessimistic about the idea of becoming who he was before he arrived at this plantation again. Well... that was until he met Sandy of course."

"Sandy was also a slave on this plantation whose wife was free. He invited Douglass to sneak out and come along with him to visit her. On their way back Sandy gave Douglass a ROOT that had powers of strength. Frederick didn't believe this but took the ROOT anyways."

"Upon his return on Sunday morning, Covey greeted Douglass with the up most kindness and respect. This unusual behavior lasted up until Monday morning. Monday morning the virtue of the root was fully tested. As the ending of the day neared Fredrick was called to feed the horses. Upon doing this, Covey entered the stables with a long rope in his hand and a face of utter disdain. At that moment, something stirred inside of Frederick. He now realized that he was the master of his own fate, though he was physically enslaved he had full control of whether or not he would continue to be mentally enslaved."