On the record
They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, nor act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of Mason and Dixon’s line.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgThey said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, nor act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of Mason and Dixon’s line.
He recounts the disbelief of others regarding his past as a slave, illustrating the stereotypes and misconceptions about Black individuals.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.