Frederick Douglass: “To enslave men successfully and safely it is necessary to keep their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short…”

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.