Tag: frederick douglass

Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand

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“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”

Frederick Douglass from his August 3, 1857 “West India Emancipation” speech at Canandaigua, New York, on the twenty-third anniversary of the event.

 

The thoughtless slave

I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must…