Frederick Douglass

The oath of an(sic) two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery!

The fugitive slave law makes MERCY TO THEM A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them.

The equality of nature is strongly asserted in childhood, and childhood requires children for associates.

For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion.

The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included!

Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime.

I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

Nevertheless, I sometimes got full meals and kind words from sympathizing old slaves, who knew my sufferings, and received the comforting assurance that I should be a man some day.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?

The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and…

I speak but the simple truth, when I say, I have often been so pinched with hunger, that I have fought with the dog—“Old Nep”—for the smallest crumbs that fell from the kitchen table, and have been glad when I won a single crumb in the…

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.