Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot- box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! [Applause.] If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone,—your interference is doing him a positive injury. - F. Douglas, from “What the Black Man Wants”
Seems to me, if Mr Douglas were alive today, he would be appalled at the lost opportunity. He would see these inner city thugs as the worm-eaten rotten to the core apples who fell from the trees. I think he’d kick them to them to the curb instead of using them for agitprop as our politicians do.
Interesting. I need to find my son’s “argumentative” paper that he wrote back in high school. It was about why the abolition of slavery was a bad idea.
He has always been an over-achiever, and figured that would be the most difficult position to take. Of course he researched it - and made a compelling argument. I proof-read it for him those many years ago and was pretty amazed. He made lots of interesting points.
(I did tell him to try to add in some lines about how “of course slavery was wrong, but....”)
IIRC, is conclusion was that that slavery would have died a natural death in time, which would have been better in the long term than the forced termination of slavery.
(He did get an “A” on the paper.)
One of the turning points in his life after he escaped from slavery was the day he began working in a Massachusetts shipyard. This experience made him understand how dysfunctional and destructive slavery was even for the slave owners. He realized that he -- a lowly laborer working in a shipyard -- actually had a better standard of living than his former slave masters in Maryland. This made him understand the importance of business and industry in America even for blacks, and made him more respectful of this country's institutions and founders than he had been before.
This guy was an intelligent, self-made man ... the epitome of an iconic figure in American history.