Frederick Douglass, from his “What The Black Man Wants” speech, at the Annual Meeting of The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at Boston, 1865:
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 worm-eaten 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.