Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglasswas an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a...
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth14 February 1818
CityTalbot County, MD
I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky-her grand old woods-her fertile fields-her beautiful rivers-her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slave-holding and wrong; When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten; That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.
Everybody has asked the question . . . 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.
I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.
Our destiny is largely in our hands.