Shortly before he died Frederick Douglass made a tour through the South.
Among other places he visited Atlanta University. At that place he made
an address to the young people. It is so full of hope and help that I
wanted to place it where every ambitious black boy and girl in America
can see it. It has never been published before, except in the Bulletin
of Atlanta University. Mr. Douglass said:
[Illustration: FREDERICK DOUGLASS.]
“My young friends: I see before me an assemblage of young people, full
of the blood of youth, just entering upon the voyage of life. It is an
interesting spectacle to me, as to us all, to meet such an assembly as I
see before me this morning in an institution of learning, of knowledge,
and of ethics and of Christian graces. I experience great pleasure in
what I see to-day. There is no language to describe my feelings. It was
no mere image that John saw and described in the apocalypse. It was a
new heaven and a new earth indeed. When I look back upon the time when I
was a fugitive slave I recollect the evils and cruelty of
slave-hunting. No mountain was so high, no valley was so deep, no glen
so secluded, no place so sacred to liberty that I could put my foot upon
it and say I was free! But now I am free! Contrasting my condition then
and now the change exceeds what John saw upon the isle of Patmos. A
change vast and wonderful, that came by the fulfilling of laws. We got
freed by laws, marvellous in our eyes. Men, brave men, good men, who had
the courage of their convictions, were arrested and subjected to
persecutions, mobs, lawlessness, violence. They had the conviction of
truth. Simple truth lasts forever!
“Be not discouraged. There is a future for you and a future for me. The
resistance encountered now predicates hope. The negro degraded,
indolent, lazy, indifferent to progress, is not objectionable to the
average public mind. Only as we rise in the scale of proficiency do we
encounter opposition. When we see a ship that lies rotting in the
harbor, its seams yawning, its sides broken in, taking water and
sinking, it meets with no opposition; but when its sails are spread to
the breeze, its top-sails and its royals flying, then there is
resistance. The resistance is in proportion to its speed. In Memphis
three negro men were lynched, not because they were low and degraded,
but because they knew their business and other men wanted their
business.
“I am delighted to see you all. Don’t be despondent. Don’t measure
yourselves from the white man’s standpoint; but measure yourselves by
the depths from which you have come. I measure from these depths, and I
see what Providence has done. Daniel Webster said in his speech at the
dedication of Bunker Hill monument: ‘Bunker Hill monument is completed.
There it stands, a memorial of the past, a monitor of the present, a
hope of the future. It looks, speaks, acts!’ So this assembly is a
monitor of the present, a memorial of the past, a hope of the future. I
see boys and girls around me. Boys, you will be men some day. Girls, you
will be women some day. May you become good men and women, intelligent
men and women, a credit to yourselves and your country.
“I thank you for what I have experienced to-day and I leave you
reluctantly, and shall always carry with me the pleasantest impressions
of this occasion.”