Frederick Douglass Quote
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. (April 1886)
Earliest reference found in: "Young Children, Volume 53" (1964), p. 375. Probably apocryphal.
Picture Source: Wikimedia CommonsFrederick Douglass
Born: February 14, 1817
Died: February 20, 1895 (aged 78)
Occupation: Author, abolitionist, editor, diplomat
Bio: Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.