Frederick Douglass: “In a family where there was so much that was harsh, cold and indifferent, the slightest word or look of kindness passed…”

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.

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