On the recordJanuary 1, 1855
These holidays are conductors or safety valves to carry off the explosive elements inseparable from the human mind, when reduced to the condition of slavery.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgThese holidays are conductors or safety valves to carry off the explosive elements inseparable from the human mind, when reduced to the condition of slavery.
In his autobiography, Douglass uses a metaphor to explain how slave holidays served to prevent rebellion among enslaved people.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
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…
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.