Frederick Douglass: “I could teach him “the letter,” but he could teach me “the spirit,” and refreshing times we had together, in singing and…”

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.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.