Frederick Douglass: “The right of every American citizen to select his own society and invite whom he will to his own parlor and table should…”

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

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.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.