I assert then that poverty, ignorance, and degradation are the combined evils; or in other words, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the United States.
From his autobiography, Douglass identifies the primary challenges facing free Black Americans.
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More from Frederick Douglass
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.