Their words
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Source: “West India Emancipation” address, Canandaigua, New York, 3 August 1857
Context Addressing a mainly Black crowd at a First of August celebration of British West Indian emancipation, he argued that the enslaved had to press for their own freedom.
Pick the card background
More words from Frederick Douglass
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: 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.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
“The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
“I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.”
Frederick Douglass United States♥ 0
More words from Politics & Liberation
“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Nelson Mandela South Africa♥ 0
“Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana♥ 0
“It's true, you cannot kill ideas. Ideas do not die.”
Thomas Sankara Burkina Faso♥ 0
Newsletter
Get the briefing. It's free.
Every week, our take on the leaders and forces shaping Africa and its diaspora — straight to your inbox.