Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago.
Frederick Douglass: “Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would…”
Editor's note · Context
At a public gathering, Douglass notes the stark contrast between the present acceptance of their demonstration and the intolerance it would have faced two decades prior.
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