Thread by @PubliusBooks

“I think [people] make a great mistake in saying so much of race and color. I know no such basis for the claims of justice....In this race-way they put the emphasis in the wrong place.”
— Frederick Douglass
1

“I do now and always have attached more importance to manhood than to mere kinship or identity with any variety of the human family. RACE, in the popular sense, is narrow; humanity is broad. The one is special; the other is universal. The one is transient; the other permanent.”
2

“In the essential dignity of man as man, I find all necessary incentives and aspirations to a useful and noble life. Man is broad enough and high enough as a platform for you and me and all of us.”
3

“[We] should advance to the high position of the Constitution of the country. The Constitution makes no distinction on account of race or color, and [we] should make none.”
4

“We hear, since emancipation, much...in commendation of race pride, race love, race effort, race superiority, race men, and the like.... In all this talk of race, the motive may be good, but the method is bad. It is an effort to cast out Satan by Beelzebub.”
5

“The evils which are now crushing the negro to earth have their root...in this narrow spirit of race and color, and the negro has no more right to excuse and foster it than have men of any other race.”
#FrederickDouglass
6

“I recognize and adopt no narrow basis for my thoughts, feelings, or modes of action. I would place myself, and I would place you, my young friends, upon grounds vastly higher and broader than any founded upon race or color.”
#FrederickDouglass
7

“Neither law, learning, nor religion, is addressed to any man’s color or race. Science, education, the Word of God, and all the virtues known among men, are recommended to us, not as races, but as men.”
#FrederickDouglass
8

“We are not recommended to love or hate any particular variety of the human family more than any other. Not as Ethiopeans; not as Caucasians; not as Mongolians; not as Afro-Americans, or Anglo-Americans, are we addressed, but as men.”
#FrederickDouglass
9

“God and nature speak to our manhood, and to our manhood alone. Here all ideas of duty and moral obligation are predicated. We are accountable only as men. In the language of Scripture, we are called upon to ‘quit ourselves like men.’”
#FrederickDouglass
10

“To those who are everlastingly prating about race men, I have to say: Gentlemen, you reflect upon your best friends. It was not the race or the color of the negro that won for him the battle of liberty.”
#FrederickDouglass
11

“[Liberty] was won, not because the victim of slavery was a negro, mulatto, or an Afro-American, but because the victim of slavery was a man and a brother to all other men, a child of God, and could claim with all mankind a common Father...”
#FrederickDouglass
12

“...and therefore should be recognized as an accountable being, a subject of government, and entitled to justice, liberty and equality before the law, and every where else.”
#FrederickDouglass
13

“Man saw that he had a right to liberty, to education, and to an equal chance with all other men in the common race of life and in the pursuit of happiness.”
#FrederickDouglass
14

“...while slavery lasted, we could seldom get ourselves recognized in any form of law or language, as men. Our old masters were remarkably shy of recognizing our manhood, even in words written or spoken.”
#FrederickDouglass
15

“They called a man, with a head as white as mine, a boy. The old advertisements were carefully worded: ‘Run away, my boy Tom, Jim or Harry,’ never, ‘my man.’”
#FrederickDouglass
16

“Hence, at the risk of being deficient in the quality of love and loyalty to race and color, I confess that in my advocacy of the colored man’s cause, whether in the name of education or freedom...”
#FrederickDouglass
17

“I have had more to say of manhood and of what is comprehended in manhood and in womanhood, than of the mere accident of race and color; and, if this is disloyalty to race and color, I am guilty.”
#FrederickDouglass
18

“I insist upon it that the lesson which [everyone] ought now to learn, is, that there is no moral or intellectual quality in the color of a man’s cuticle; that color, in itself, is neither good nor bad;”
#FrederickDouglass
19

“...to be black or white is neither a proper source of pride or of shame. I go further, and declare that no man’s devotion to the cause of justice, liberty, and humanity, is to be weighed, measured and determined by his color or race.”
#FrederickDouglass
20

“We should never forget that the ablest and most eloquent voices ever raised in behalf of the black man’s cause, were the voices of white men. Not for the race; not for color, but for man and manhood alone, they labored, fought and died.”
#FrederickDouglass
21

“Neither Phillips, nor Sumner, nor Garrison, nor John Brown, nor Gerrit Smith was a black man. They were white men, and yet [no one was] ever truer to the black man’s cause than were these and other men like them.”
#FrederickDouglass
22

“They saw in the slave, manhood, brotherhood, and womanhood outraged, neglected and degraded, and their own noble manhood, not their racehood, revolted at the offence.”
#FrederickDouglass
23

“They placed the emphasis where it belonged; not on the mint, anise and cummin or race and color, but upon manhood the weightier matters of the law.”
#FrederickDouglass
24

“...I can easily afford to be reproached and denounced for standing, in defense of this principle, against all comers....It is better to be a member of the great human family, than a member of particular variety of the human family....”
#FrederickDouglass
25

“Away then with the nonsense that a man must be black to be true to the rights of black men. I put my foot upon the effort to draw lines between the white and the black, or between blacks and so-called Afro-Americans, or to draw race lines any where in the domain of liberty.”
26

“Whoever is for equal rights, for equal education, for equal opportunities for all men, of whatever race or color,— I hail him as a ‘countryman, clansman, kinsman and brother beloved.’”
#FrederickDouglass
27/27