Frederick Douglass: “There is, to be sure, no law forbidding the selling of land to the…”

On the record

There is, to be sure, no law forbidding the selling of land to the colored people, but there is an understanding which has the full effect of law.

Said by

Frederick Douglass

Source

Douglass notes the informal agreements that effectively prevent land sales to African Americans, despite the absence of legal prohibitions.

More from Frederick Douglass

Jan 1, 1881

No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.

Jan 1, 1881

Everywhere in the south the colored man is learning to read.

Jan 1, 1881

Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.

Jan 1, 1881

The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.

Frederick Douglass: “There is, to be sure, no law forbidding the selling of land to the colored people, but there is an understanding which…”