"The real question...
the all commanding question is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American christianity can be made to include and protect alike and forever all American citizens’ in rights which, in a generous moment in the nations’s life have been guaranteed to them by the organic and fundamental law of the land.
It is whether this great nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself since the late war shall bring back its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The “Negro” is of inferior activity and power in the solution of this problem.
He is the clay, the nation is the potter.
He is the subject, the nation is the sovereign.
It is not what he shall be or do, but what the nation shall be and do, which is to solve this great national problem.
Speaking for him, I can commend him upon every ground. He is loyal and patriotic; service is the badge of all his tribe. He has proved it before, and will prove it again. The country has never called upon him in vain. The has been in the past in this respect they he will be in the future. All he asks now, all he has ever asked is that the nation shall fulfill toward him its own recognized and and self-imposed obligations.
When he asks for bread, he will not accept stone.
When he asks for fish, he will not accept a serpent.
His protests now is against being cheated by cunningly- devised judicial decisions, by frauds upon the ballot box, or by brutal violence of red-shirted rebels.
He only asks the American people to adjust the practice to the justice and wisdom of their laws, and he holds that this is first, midst, and last, and the only problem to be solved. "
Frederick Douglas - The Nation's Problem
The Future of the "Negro", from The North American Review, July 1884
-Yogabrofessor
Montmarquet, J. A., & Hardy, W. H. (2000). Reflections: An Anthology of African American Philosophy. Cengage Learning.
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