Frederick Douglass: “They turned us loose to the open sky and left us not a foot of ground…”

On the record

They turned us loose to the open sky and left us not a foot of ground from which to get a crust of bread.

Said by

Frederick Douglass

Source

This quote expresses the abandonment felt by freed individuals after emancipation, emphasizing their dire circumstances.

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That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

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

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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

Frederick Douglass: “They turned us loose to the open sky and left us not a foot of ground from which to get a crust of bread.”