Frederick Douglass
The Public Record
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century".
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.
But whether it shall come late or come soon will depend mainly upon ourselves.
Notwithstanding the great and all-abounding darkness of our past, the clouds that still overhang us in the moral and social sky, the defects inherited from a bygone condition of servitude, it is the faith of my soul that this brighter and…
The battle against popular prejudice will have been fought and won, and in common with all other races and colors, we shall have an equal chance in the race of life.
If the time shall ever come when we shall possess in the colored people of the United States, a class of men noted for enterprise, industry, economy, and success, we shall no longer have any trouble in the matter of civil and political…
Every dollar you lay up, represents one day’s independence, one day of rest and security in the future.
A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise.
Pardon me, therefore, for urging upon you, my people, the importance of saving your earnings; of denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the future, of consuming less for yourselves that your children may have a…
Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless…