Frederick Douglas Quotes

In the words of Frederick Douglas, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. We must be that demand. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.

Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not!

The black agenda, from Frederick Douglas to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing agenda of the nation.

Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights; it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.

All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole. The black agenda - from Frederick Douglas to A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, Fannie Lou Hammer to Ella Baker - has always been tied to race talk inseparable from expanding possibilities of democracy, expanding empowerment of everyday people.

As Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist, said: "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." You need the truth, and you also need a demand, and you need to bring that demand into the realm of electoral politics. If you don't do that, it's very hard to get such an entrenched machine to move.

Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system.