Frederick Douglass: “A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise.”

None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.

Greatness does not come to any people on flowery beds of ease.

This part of our destiny is in our own hands.

Let us then, wherever we are, whether at the North or at the South, resolutely struggle on in the belief that there is a better day coming, and that we by patience, industry, uprightness, and economy may hasten that better day.