Frederick Douglass

If the influences against us are strong, those for us are also strong.

Yet, sir, in this seemingly desperate case, I do not despair for my people.

They do not deplore, but glory, in our misfortunes.

Evidently, this society looks upon our “extremity as its opportunity,” and we may expect that it will use the occasion well.

This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the whites, the whites can fall to us.

White men are becoming house-servants, cooks, and stewards, common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry, and, for aught I see, they adjust themselves to their stations with all becoming obsequiousness.

Every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make room perhaps for some newly-arrived emigrants, whose hunger and color are thought to give them a title to especial favor.

He will find that in assuming our avocation he also has assumed our degradation.

The cruel lie is told the Irish, that our adversity is essential to their prosperity.

They are taught to believe that we eat the bread which of right belongs to them.

The Irish people, warm-hearted, generous, and sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their own green island, are instantly taught, on arriving in this Christian country, to hate and despise the colored people.

We see here the black man attacked in his vital interests; prejudice and hate are excited against him; enmity is stirred up between him and other laborers.