I never rise to speak before an American audience without something of the feeling that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole race.
Frederick Douglass: “I never rise to speak before an American audience without something of the feeling that my failure or success will bring…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass describes the immense pressure and responsibility he felt as a Black orator representing his entire race before American audiences.
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To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.