A contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition; between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of timidity.
Douglass describes in his autobiography the prolonged internal conflict between moral conviction and the psychological effects of oppression.
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Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
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.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.