He is only a part of the great public, and while he has the right to walk, ride, and be accommodated with food and shelter in a public conveyance or hotel, he has no exclusive right to say that another citizen, tall or short, black or white, shall not have the same civil treatment with himself.
Douglass explains that while individuals have rights in public spaces, these rights do not grant exclusivity over those spaces.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
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.