It was the policy of the system to keep him both ignorant and degraded, the better and more safely to defraud him of his hard earnings; and this argument never staggered me.
Douglass reveals that slavery intentionally kept Black people ignorant and degraded to facilitate their exploitation, a fact he found undeniable.
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More from Frederick Douglass
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.