Frederick Douglass: “In it are the best elements of the American people, and if any good is to come to us politically it will be through that…”

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man’s day.