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Do You Know Who I Am?
I am
FREDRICK
DOUGLASS
I am
FREDRICK
DOUGLASS
I grew up a slave in the early 1800’s. Mama didn’t know when I was born so I chose Feb. 14, as my birthday. Daddy was likely our Massa, but like the rest, I was whipped weekly for something that didn’t sit right. I was shuffled around some to other plantations. Some masters were kind, others cruel. I had a little help learning my letters, but the massa didn’t want us blacks to learn. It made me determined to learn, but I hid it. I fell in love with a free black girl. She gave me hope of freedom. I ran away on a train in a soldier’s uniform she gave me. I went to the abolitionist town of Philadelphia and wrote for her to join me. We were married. We moved to Massachusetts to another abolitionist town and I became a preacher at the age of 20. I also was asked to speak out against slavery.
In 1852, I was 35 and was asked to speak before the President and guests in Washington, DC for our country’s 76th birthday. My speech was called,
In 1852, I was 35 and was asked to speak before the President and guests in Washington, DC for our country’s 76th birthday. My speech was called,
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“What, to the American slave is your Fourth of July?”
I answered - a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” I also said: The Constitutional framers were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. |
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I came to appreciate that this document is the light of hope for all. All men are created equal. With rights to free speech, freedom of religion, free press, freedom to bear arms, free from unreasonable searches, innocent until proven guilty, fair trials, trial by jury, no excessive bails and powers given to the state and people. This spells freedoms and liberty for all races and creeds. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass - written in 1855, in dialogue with white-slave owners about the immortality of slavery. We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Frederick Douglass - Self-Made Men - Address in 1859 before the Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, VA |
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Frederick Douglass - In 1870 Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to new voters, urging them to vote their conscience.
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass - Boston 1860
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass - Boston 1860
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I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
Frederick Douglass - In 1870 Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to new voters, urging them to vote their conscience. Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglass - a speech in 1886 |
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
Frederick Douglass - Bethel Literary and Historical Association in the Metropolitan AME Church, Washington,DC. October 21, 1890
Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
Frederick Douglass - The Light and Liberty of Education On September 3, 1894, while speaking in Manassas, Virginia
Frederick Douglass - Bethel Literary and Historical Association in the Metropolitan AME Church, Washington,DC. October 21, 1890
Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
Frederick Douglass - The Light and Liberty of Education On September 3, 1894, while speaking in Manassas, Virginia
Do you know others that should see this? Most Vermont public libaries have read his first speech for the Fourth of July that says why should blacks celebrate their independence? He later realized the Constitution was the hope that the blacks needed. Take copies to your libary and ask them to share it.
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