In those days, it was thought strange that a white man and a colored man could dine peaceably at the same table, and in some parts the strangeness of such a sight has not entirely subsided.
Douglass observes the societal strangeness surrounding a white man and a Black man dining together, noting that such prejudice had not entirely disappeared.
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None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
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.
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…