I repeat, and my contention is that this Negro problem formula lays the fault at the door of the Negro and removes it from the door of the white man, shields the guilty and blames the innocent, makes the Negro responsible, when it should so make the nation.
Douglass emphasizes that the blame for societal issues should not fall on the oppressed but on the oppressors.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.