When it comes to Black historic figures, their entire catalog of work is usually reduced to their greatest hits (*coughs in I have a dream*), and Frederick Douglass is no exception.
I grew up hearing the famous quote “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.” What I didn’t grow up with was the inflammatory and infamous speech this quote was taken from.
On August 3, 1857, Douglass spoke at the 23rd West India Emancipation celebration at Canandaigua, New York. After giving a cursory nod to the so -called morality of British abolitionists, he spoke at length about how Black violence was a necessary component of abolition.