High schools and colleges are excellent institutions, and will in due season be greatly subservient to our progress; but they are the result, as well as they are the demand of a point of progress, which we as a people have not yet attained.
In his autobiography, Douglass explains why he believes high schools and colleges are not the immediate priority for the advancement of Black Americans.
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They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
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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…