It is plain, that everything like rational enjoyment among the slaves, is frowned upon; and only those wild and low sports, peculiar to semi-civilized people, are encouraged.
In his autobiography, Douglass observes that slaveholders discouraged genuine enjoyment among enslaved people, promoting only degrading forms of recreation.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.