Frederick Douglass: “To eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work…”

On the recordJanuary 1, 1855

To eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing.

Said by

Frederick Douglass

Source

Douglass exposes the perverse logic of slavery, where an enslaved person's attempt to claim the fruits of their own labor is deemed an act of theft.

More from Frederick Douglass

Jan 1, 1881

True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.

Jan 1, 1881

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.

Jan 1, 1881

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.

Jan 1, 1881

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.

Frederick Douglass: “To eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing.”