It was enough for me to listen—to receive and applaud the great words of others, and only whisper in private, among the white laborers on the wharves, and elsewhere, the truths which burned in my breast.
Frederick Douglass: “It was enough for me to listen—to receive and applaud the great words of others, and only whisper in private, among the…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass recounts his early, private efforts to share abolitionist truths among laborers before he became a public speaker.
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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…
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
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