Frederick Douglass Quotes

What's going to be a hundred years from now ain't much account to us.... The whites has the lands and the sense, an' the blacks has nothin' but their freedom, an' it's jest like a dream to them.

The general interest both of the white man and of the negroes requires that he should be kept as near to the condition of slavery as possible’

Inequality doesn't create unhappiness.

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

This is a contest between the white man’s hope and black evil.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

What does it amount to if the Black man, after having been made free by the letter of your law ... is to be subject to the [former] slaveholder's shotgun?

What then to the American black Slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him ... constant injustice.

The black world squirms beneath the feet of the white in impotent fury or sullen hate.

I was angry with the Church because they were not aggressively pointing out the immorality of racism.

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

...on every sin which a colored man commits, the just white man must make a considerable discount, because of the colored man's antecedents. The heirs of slavery cannot with any sort of justice, be required to be as clear and straight and upright as the heirs of ancient freedom. And besides, whenever a colored man commits an unright action, upon his head is the guilt of only about one tenth of it, and upon your heads and mine and the rest of the white race lies fairly and justly the other nine tenths of the guilt.

Modern technical civilization does not seem to be as well handled by the black man as by the white man in the United States

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

Freedom in America was not always flat. Racism made it un-flat, so that some people had privileges over other people.

The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism - the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success - actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.

I was born on an island with 96 percent of the people black. But all the power and the economy was in the hands of white people who only formed four per cent.

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

Whites don’t like to see the nigger with too much … White people was afraid that money will make the nigger act like his own man.

Poor whites have been pitted against poor blacks to assuage the conscience of the affluent.

White folks don't want peace; they want quiet. The price you pay for peace is justice.