Frederick Douglass: “No white man ever made the black man’s cause more completely his own.”

Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

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.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.