The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is practically a mockery, and the right to vote, provided for in the fifteenth amendment, is literally stamped out in face of government.
From his autobiography, Douglass condemns the practical nullification of citizenship and voting rights for Black Americans, despite their constitutional guarantees.
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I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.