It is plain, that everything like rational enjoyment among the slaves, is frowned upon; and only those wild and low sports, peculiar to semi-civilized people, are encouraged.
In his autobiography, Douglass observes that slaveholders discouraged genuine enjoyment among enslaved people, promoting only degrading forms of recreation.
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The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.