Wednesday, November 5, 2008
REMEMBERING HOW FAR WE COME: THINKING ABOUT FREDERICK DOUGLASS
I am way beyond happiness of the newly elected 44th President of the United States! I am ever mindful of those that started the conversation...those that held the dream before the dreamer spoke our hopes and wishes. I am thinking of Frederick Douglas and his tenacity. I am thinking of him and so many other men and women who paved the way with their blood, sweat and tears. I am in awe of this moment. What must it have been like to dream this day more than 100 years ago?
Excerpt from Frederick Douglas Speech, given at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Meeting, April 1865
What the Black Man Wants:
It may be asked, "Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right." Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is the sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote [applause], and my heart and voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman; but that question rests upon another basis than which our right rests. We may be asked, I say, why we want it. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it again, as a means for educating our race. Men are so constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities largely by the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation.