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Frederick Douglass cytaty
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Frederick Douglass, urodzony jako Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey – amerykański niewolnik, działacz społeczny, edytor, mówca, pisarz, mąż stanu. Po ucieczce z niewoli został przywódcą ruchu abolicjonistów.

Urodził się jako niewolnik. Nazywał się wówczas Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. W wieku lat ośmiu został odsprzedany do Baltimore, gdzie żona jego nowego pana pomogła mu w nauce czytania i pisania. Potem pracował w miejscowej stoczni przy smołowaniu kadłubów drewnianych statków.

W 1838 zbiegł do New Bedford w stanie Massachusetts. By uniknąć schwytania zmienił nazwisko na Douglass i odrzucił drugie i trzecie imię. Chciał ponownie podjąć pracę jako smolarz, ale inni, biali robotnicy, nie chcieli z nim pracować. Podejmował się więc najprostszych prac .

W 1841 roku, podczas zebrania abolicjonistów z Massachusetts Antislavery Society, wygłosił mowę na temat znaczenia wolności osobistej. Zebrani byli tak poruszeni jego przemową, że najęli go jako mówcę na wiecach przeciwników niewolnictwa. Od tego czasu Douglass stał się aktywnym przeciwnikiem segregacji rasowej. Występował przeciwko oddzielnym wagonom kolejowym dla białych i czarnych ostentacyjnie zajmując miejsce w tych pierwszych. Wielokrotnie usuwano go stamtąd siłą.

Występował też przeciwko dyskryminacji religijnej i odrębnym mszom w kościołach. Jego akcja przeciwko segregacji rasowej przyniosła sukces.

W 1845 opublikował swe wspomnienia zatytułowane "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass". Obawiając się, że książka może doprowadzić do schwytania go jako zbiegłego niewolnika, wyjechał do Anglii. Tam nadal głosił potrzebę zniesienia niewolnictwa i pozyskał przyjaciół, którzy zebrali pieniądze na wykupienie go z niewoli.

Wrócił do USA w 1847 i założył antyniewolnicze pismo "North Star" w Rochester, NY. W latach pięćdziesiątych XIX wieku oskarżał białych pracodawców o przyjmowanie do pracy białych imigrantów w miejsce Murzynów.

Jego dom był miejscem postoju na trasie tzw. "kolei podziemnej", czyli szlaków, jakimi poruszali się zbiegli niewolnicy. Podczas wojny secesyjnej pomagał w rekrutacji Afroamerykanów do armii Unii. Kilkakrotnie dyskutował problem niewolnictwa z prezydentem Abrahamem Lincolnem. W latach 1861–1866 był wysokim urzędnikiem administracji państwowej w Waszyngtonie, a w latach 1889–1891 wysłannikiem na Haiti. Oprócz ww. wspomnień wydał książkę My Bondage and My Freedom . Wikipedia  

✵ 14. Luty 1818 – 20. Luty 1895   •   Natępne imiona Φρέντερικ Ντάγκλας, ფრედერიკ დუგლასი, فردریک داقلاس, பிரெடரிக் டக்ளஸ்
Frederick Douglass Fotografia
Frederick Douglass: 276   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Frederick Douglass cytaty

„Niech wolno mi będzie powiedzieć kilka słów o filozofii reform. Cała historia postępu ludzkiej wolności pokazuje, że wszelkie ustępstwa, jakie czyniono na rzecz jej szlachetnych żądań, zrodziły się w walce (…). Bez walki nie ma postępu. Ci, którzy twierdzą, że sprzyjają wolności, a jednocześnie potępiają nastroje wzburzenia, to ludzie, którzy chcą uzyskać plon bez orki. Chcą deszczu bez grzmotów i błyskawic. Chcą oceanu bez strasznego huku fal. Walka może mieć charakter moralny, może również mieć charakter fizyczny lub też zarówno moralny, jak i fizyczny. Musi jednak być walką. Siła nie ustępuje, jeśli nie stawia się jej żądań. Nigdy nie uczyniła tego w przeszłości i nie uczyni tego nigdy w przyszłości.”

Frederick Douglass

w 1857.
Źródło: Howard Zinn, Ludowa historia Stanów Zjednoczonych. Od roku 1492 do dziś, tłum. Andrzej Wojtasik, Wyd. Krytyki Politycznej, Warszawa 2016, s. 244.

O ludziach , O historii , O charakterze , O wolności

„Władza nie rezygnuje z niczego bez powodu. Nigdy tego nie czyniła i nie nigdy nie uczyni. Wystarczy sprawdzić, na co ludzie są w stanie wyrazić milczącą zgodę, by przekonać się o stopniu niesprawiedliwości i zła, które na tych ludzi spadnie.”

Frederick Douglass

Źródło: The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 437 (Philip S. Foner ed., 1950).

O ludziach

Frederick Douglass: Cytaty po angielsku

“The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the republic lives.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

“To the mind of superficial men the future of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forget that our trouble was not ethnological, but moral, that it was not difference of complexion, but difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a coveted article of merchandise, that gave us trouble. I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the republic. We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans. Indian and Celt, Negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him or for anybody else in America outside the American government; that to guard, protect, and maintain his liberty the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country; and this was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people of the North willingly listened when I spoke. Hence, regarding as I did the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government, and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I possessed to secure this power for the recently-emancipated millions.”

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Frederick Douglass

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dougl92/dougl92.html (1892), p. 460.
1890s, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

“Men of mixed blood in this country apply the name 'negro' to themselves, not because it is a correct ethnological description, but to seem especially devoted to the black side of their parentage. Hence in some cases they are more noisily opposed to the conclusion to which I have come, than either the white or the honestly black race. The opposition to amalgamation, of which we hear so much on the part of colored people, is for most part the merest affectation, and, will never form an impassable barrier to the union of the two varieties.”

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Frederick Douglass

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

“Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As against his party, he is only as a feather against a whirlwind. In the hands of his party, Mr. Cleveland is as clay in the hands of the potter.”

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Frederick Douglass

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (1888).
1880s

“James A. Garfield must be our president. I know. Colored man, he is right on our questions, take my word for it. He is a typical American all over. He has shown us how man in the humblest circumstances can grapple with man, rise, and win. He has come from obscurity to fame, and we'll make him more famous. Has burst up through the incrustations that surround the poor, and has shown us how it is possible for an American to rise. He has built the road over which he traveled. He has buffeted the billows of adversity, and tonight, he swims in safety where Hancock, in despair, is going down.”

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Frederick Douglass

Meeting of Colored Citizens http://books.google.com/books?id=Gss_INMTZQIC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=%22He+has+buffeted+the+billows+of+adversity%22&source=bl&ots=AX-fsYd95E&sig=3j4dWH-cdeiSlKtJcFPmSAgLm4c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CgvWU8GHGrO-sQTv0YH4BA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22He%20has%20buffeted%20the%20billows%20of%20adversity%22&f=false (25 October 1880), Cooper Institute, New York.
1880s, Meeting of Colored Citizens (1880)

“The south was not far behind the north in recognizing Abraham Lincoln as the natural leader of the rising political sentiment of the country against slavery, and it was equally quick in its efforts to counteract and destroy his influence. Its papers teemed with the bitterest invectives against the 'backwoodsman of Illinois', the 'flat-boatman', the 'rail-splitter', the 'third-rate lawyer', and much else and worse.”

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Frederick Douglass

Źródło: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), p. 364.

“If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones. I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge. I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds. We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe.”

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Frederick Douglass

As quoted in Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator (1969) by Frederic May Holland, p. 212 http://books.google.it/books?id=GLbBa5OOhxMC&pg=PA212

“Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

“It is said that it is not good for man to be alone. This is true, not only in the sense in which our women’s rights’ friends so zealously and wisely teach, but it is true as to nations. The voice of civilization speaks an unmistakable language against the isolation of families, nations and races, and pleads for composite nationality as essential to her triumphs. Those races of men who have maintained the most distinct and separate existence for the longest periods of time; which have had the least intercourse with other races of men are standing confirmation of the folly of isolation. The very soil of the national mind becomes in such cases barren, and can only be resuscitated by assistance from without.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery.”

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Frederick Douglass

On the American Civil War (1861); as quoted in Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=qPW8i99nuvEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Richard A. Long.
1860s

“Again, it should be borne in mind that the mere text, and only the text, and not any commentaries or creeds written by those who wished to give the text a meaning apart from its plain reading, was adopted as the Constitution of the United States. It should also be borne in mind that the intentions of those who framed the Constitution, be they good or bad, for slavery or against slavery, are so respected so far, and so far only, as we find those intentions plainly stated in the Constitution. It would be the wildest of absurdities, and lead to endless confusion and mischiefs, if, instead of looking to the written paper itself, for its meaning, it were attempted to make us search it out, in the secret motives, and dishonest intentions, of some of the men who took part in writing it. It was what they said that was adopted by the people, not what they were ashamed or afraid to say, and really omitted to say.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

“No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

“It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party.”

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Frederick Douglass

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (June 1888).
1880s

“Of errors and defects we certainly have not less than our full share, enough to keep the reformer awake, the statesman busy, and the country in a pretty lively state of agitation for some time to come. Perfection is an object to be aimed at by all, but it is not an attribute of any form of government. Mutability is the law for all. Something different, something better, or something worse may come, but so far as respects our present system and form of government, and the altitude we occupy, we need not shrink from comparison with any nation of our times. We are to day the best fed, the best clothed, the best sheltered and the best instructed people in the world.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“A man's right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right - and there let it rest forever.”

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Frederick Douglass

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

“We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice. I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my 'right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth', if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

“The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.”

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Frederick Douglass

Speech at the Church of the Puritans, New York City (May 1863)
1860s

“The essence and significance of our devotions here today are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

“I deny and utterly scout the idea, that there is now, properly speaking, any such thing as a negro problem before the American people. It is not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelligent or ignorant, who is on trial, or whose qualities are giving trouble to the nation… The real question, the all-commanding question, is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American Christianity can be made to include and protect, alike and forever, all American citizens… It is whether this great nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself during the late war, or shall swing back to its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The trouble is that the colored people have still to contend against ’a fierce and formidable foe,’ the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried institution.”

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Frederick Douglass

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

“For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

“Assuming then that immigration already has a foothold and will combine for many years to come, we have a new element in our national composition which is likely to exercise a large influence upon the thought and the action of the whole nation.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“A man to whom despotism is the savior and liberty the destroyer of society, who, during the last twenty years, in every contest between liberty and oppression, uniformally and promptly took sides with the oppressor; who regarded every extension of the right of suffrage, even to white men in his own country, as shooting Niagara; who gloated over deeds of cruelty, and talked of applying to the backs of men the beneficent whip, to the great delight of many of the slaveholders of America in particular, could have but little sympathy with our emancipated and progressive Republic, or with the triumph of liberty any where. But the American people can easily stand the utterances of such a man. They however have a right to be impatient and indignant at those among ourselves who turn the most hopeful portents into omens of disaster, and make themselves the ministers of despair, when they should be those of hope, and help cheer on the country in the new grand career of justice upon which it has now so nobly and bravely entered.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“We should take counsel of both nature and art in the consideration of this question. When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundations of the future Republic. There is a law of harmony in all departments of nature. The oak is in the acorn. The career and destiny of individual men are enfolded in the elements of which they are composed. The same is true of a nation. It will be something or it will be nothing. It will be great, or it will be small, according to its own essential qualities. As these are rich and varied, or pure and simple, slender and feeble, broad and strong, so will be the life and destiny of the nation itself. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. The ship cannot sail faster than the wind. The flight of the arrow depends upon the strength and elasticity of the bow, and as with these, so with a nation.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“The old question as to what shall be done with the negro will have to give place to the greater question “What shall be done with the Mongolian,” and perhaps we shall see raised one still greater, namely, “What will the Mongolian do with both the negro and the white?” Already has the matter taken shape in California and on the Pacific coast generally. Already has California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinaman. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempts and vulgar jest. Already are they the constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese. In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particular race or nation. It is met with, not only in the conduct of one nation towards another, but in the conduct of the inhabitants of the different parts of the same country, some times of the same city, and even of the same village. 'Lands intersected by a narrow frith abhor each other. Mountains interposed, make enemies of nations'. To the Greek, every man not speaking Greek is a barbarian. To the Jew, everyone not circumcised is a gentile. To the Mohametan, every one not believing in the Prophet is a kaffer.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“It is quite impossible, at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve the problem.”

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Frederick Douglass

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

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Frederick Douglass

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

“I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask if I would favor such immigrations? I answer, I would. 'Would you admit them as witnesses in our courts of law?' I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would.”

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Frederick Douglass

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)