In view of this fact, I am happy to attribute any love of letters I may have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother--a woman who belonged to a race whose mental endowments are still disparaged and despised.
Challenging racist assumptions about intelligence, Douglass proudly attributes his intellectual inclinations to his Black mother's inherent genius rather than his white paternity.
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The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
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.
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…
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.