Frederick Douglass
The Public Record
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century".
Jan 1, 1881
A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
Jan 1, 1881
He could not only be deaf to the appeals of the helpless against the aggressor, but he could himself commit outrages deep, dark, and nameless.
Jan 1, 1881
He could, when it suited him, appear to be literally insensible to the claims of humanity.
Jan 1, 1881
While this lad could not associate with ignorance without sharing its shade, he could not give his black playmates his company without giving them his superior intelligence as well.
Jan 1, 1881
There was even at that time something a little inconsistent and laughable, in my mind, in the blending of prayer with punishment.
Jan 1, 1881
Everybody in the South seemed to want the privilege of whipping somebody else.
Jan 1, 1881
It goes sadly against the grain to address and treat a negro as one would address and treat a white man.
Jan 1, 1881
It was seldom that a slave, however venerable, was honored with a surname in Maryland, and so completely has the south shaped the manners of the north in this respect that their right to such honor is tardily admitted even now.
Jan 1, 1881
Strange and even ridiculous as it may seem, among a people so uncultivated and with so many stern trials to look in the face, there is not to be found among any people a more rigid enforcement of the law of respect to elders than is…
Jan 1, 1881
Slaves knew enough of the Orthodox theology at the time, to consign all bad slaveholders to hell, and they often fancied such persons wishing themselves back again to wield the lash.