These will doubtless be attained by us; but this will only be, when we have patiently and laboriously, and I may add successfully, mastered and passed through the intermediate gradations of agriculture and the mechanic arts.
Douglass asserts in his autobiography that Black Americans must first master agriculture and mechanic arts to achieve lasting professional success.
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Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
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.
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.