They were shut out from all lucrative employments and compelled to be merely barbers, waiters, coachmen and the like at wages so low that they could lay up little or nothing.
Describing the economic plight of colored people, Douglass highlights their exclusion from profitable jobs and their confinement to low-wage service roles that prevent wealth accumulation.
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More from Frederick Douglass
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.
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.
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.