Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a few years be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships which they suffer are soon to be redressed?
From his autobiography, Douglass questions the necessity and wisdom of the post-Reconstruction "exodus" movement of Black Americans from the South.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
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.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.