Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the outrages committed in some parts of the Southern States against the negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation of an African exodus from the South as ill-timed and in some respects hurtful.
From his autobiography, expressing his view on the proposed exodus of African Americans from the South, on strategic approaches to racial injustice.
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More from Frederick Douglass
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
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.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.