Frederick Douglass: “Your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.”

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.

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.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.