The fact that we have endured wrongs and hardships, which would have destroyed any other race, and have increased in numbers and public consideration, ought to strengthen our faith in ourselves and our future.
In his autobiography, Douglass encourages African Americans to draw strength from their history of overcoming adversity.
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Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless…
A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
If the time shall ever come when we shall possess in the colored people of the United States, a class of men noted for enterprise, industry, economy, and success, we shall no longer have any trouble in the matter of civil and political…