Frederick Douglass: “My knowledge of my mother is very scanty, but very distinct.”

The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man’s day.

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.

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.

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.