For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.
In his autobiography, Douglass speculates on the cruel purpose behind the separation of enslaved children from their mothers, suggesting it was to destroy natural familial bonds.
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Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.