Three millions of people shut out from the light of knowledge!
Frederick Douglass: “Three millions of people shut out from the light of knowledge!”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass laments the widespread illiteracy enforced upon millions of enslaved people, denying them access to enlightenment.
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It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
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.
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.