Frederick Douglass

I, therefore, soon found that the negro had still a cause, and that he needed my voice and pen with others to plead for it.

He had nothing left him but a slavery-distorted and diseased body, and lame and twisted limbs with which to fight the battle of life.

Now, since poverty has, and can have no chance against wealth, the landless against the land owner, the ignorant against the intelligent, the freedman was powerless.

The thought of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave, or improve his own condition.

He was in a word literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.

He was free from the individual master, but the slave of society.

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only where there is power to make that law respected.

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling, and action of others; and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending, and maintaining that liberty.

Though they were not slaves they were not yet quite free.

Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended.

I never rise to speak before an American audience without something of the feeling that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole race.