William Wells Brown

thumb| William Wells Brown (November 6, 1814 – November 6, 1884) was an American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery, Brown escaped in 1834 at the age of 19. Quotes Black men, don’t be ashamed to show your colors, and to own them. My Southern Home: Or, the South and Its People (1880) chapter XXIX When will the Americans learn, that if they would encourage liberty in other countries, they must practice it at home? Letter to Wendell Phillips (November 22, 1849), printed in The Liberator, vol. 19, no. 48 (November 30, 1849), p. 191, col. 2 I know that upon the 4th of July, our 4th of July orators talk of Liberty, Democracy, and Republicanism. They talk of liberty, while three millions of their own countrymen are groaning in abject slavery. This is called 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'; it is called the 'asylum of the oppressed,' and some have been foolish enough to call it the 'Cradle of Liberty.' If it is the 'Cradle of Liberty,' they have rocked the child to death. from 1847 lecture, quoted in Clotel, or, The president's daughter edited by Robert S. Levine (2000) The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (1873) The close of the Rebellion opened to the negro a new era in his history. The chains of slavery had been severed; and although he had not been clothed with all the powers of the citizen, the black man was, nevertheless, sure of all his rights being granted, for revolutions seldom go backward. With the beginning of the work of reconstruction, the right of the negro to the ballot came legitimately before the country, and brought with it all the virus of negro hate that could be thought of. President Andrew Johnson threw the weight of his official influence into the scales against the newly-liberated people, which for a time cast a dark shadow over the cause of justice and freedom. Congress, however, by its Constitutional amendments, settled the question, and clothed the blacks with the powers of citizenship; and with their white fellow-citizens they entered the reconstruction conventions, and commenced the work of bringing their states back into the Union. (from Chapter XLIX: The New Era) An ignorant man will trust to luck for success; an educated man will make success. God helps those who help themselves. (from Chapter XLIX: The New Era) The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863) The calumniators and traducers of the Negro are to be found, mainly, among two classes. The first and most relentless are those who have done them the greatest injury, by being instrumental in their enslavement and consequent degradation. They delight to descant upon the "natural inferiority" of the blacks, and claim that we were destined only for a servile condition, entitled neither to liberty nor the legitimate pursuit of happiness. The second class are those who are ignorant of the characteristics of the race, and are the mere echoes of the first. (from Preface) Of the great family of man, the negro has, during the last half century, been more prominently before the world than any other race. He did not seek this notoriety. Isolated away in his own land, he would have remained there, had it not been for the avarice of other races, who sought him out as a victim of slavery. Two and a half centuries of the negro's enslavement have created, in many minds, the opinion that he is intellectually inferior to the rest of mankind; and now that the blacks seem in a fair way to get their freedom in this country, it has been asserted, and from high authority in the government, that the natural inferiority of the negro makes it impossible for him to live on this continent with the white man, unless in a state of bondage. All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts. every man must make equality for himself. No society, no government can make this equality. I do not expect the slave of the south to jump into equality; all I claim for him is, that he may be allowed to jump into liberty, and let him make equality for himself. Clotel: or, The President's Daughter: a narrative of slave life in the United States (1853) Were it not for persons in high places owning slaves, and thereby giving the system a reputation, and especially professed Christians, Slavery would long since have been abolished. The influence of the great "honours the corruption, and chastisement doth therefore hide his head." The great aim of the true friends of the slave should be to lay bare the institution, so that the gaze of the world may be upon it, and cause the wise, the prudent, and the pious to withdraw their support from it, and leave it to its own fate. It does the cause of emancipation but little good to cry out in tones of execration against the traders, the kidnappers, the hireling overseers, and brutal drivers, so long as nothing is said to fasten the guilt on those who move in a higher circle. (from the Preface) With the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners and their mothers slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair. (beginning of Chapter I) The appearance of Clotel on the auction block created a deep sensation amongst the crowd. There she stood, with a complexion as white as most of those who were waiting with a wish to become her purchasers. (Chapter I) Known to God only is the amount of human agony and suffering which sends its cry from the slave markets and Negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man up to his ear; mothers weeping for their children, breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts. (Chapter V) sad to say, Jefferson is not the only American statesman who has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then left his own children to die slaves. (Chapter XVII) Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous. (Chapter XX) Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (1848) Even a name by which to be known among men, slavery had denied me. I was born in Lexington, Ky. The man who stole me as soon as I was born, recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed to be born his property, in a book which he kept for that purpose. My mother's name was Elizabeth. She had seven children, viz.: Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of us were children of the same father. My father's name, as I learned from my mother, was George Higgins. He was a white man, a relative of my master, and connected with some of the first families in Kentucky. (beginning of Chapter I) There are exceptions among slaveholders, as well as among other sinners; and the fact that a slaveholder feeds his slaves better, clothes them better, than another, does not alter the case; he is a slaveholder. I do not ask the slaveholder to feed, clothe, or to treat his victim better as a slave. I am not waging a warfare against the collateral evils, or what are sometimes called the abuses, of slavery. I wage a war against slavery itself, because it takes man down from the lofty position which God intended he should occupy, and places him upon a level with the beasts of the field. Quotes about I heartily thank you for the privilege of reading the manuscript of your Narrative. I have read it with deep interest and strong emotion. I am much mistaken if it be not greatly successful and eminently useful. It presents a different phase of the infernal slave-system from that portrayed in the admirable story of Mr. Douglass, and gives us a glimpse of its hideous cruelties in other portions of its domain. Your opportunities of observing the workings of this accursed system have been singularly great. Your experiences in the Field, in the House, and especially on the River in the service of the slave-trader, Walker, have been such as few individuals have had;—no one, certainly, who has been competent to describe them. What I have admired, and marvelled at, in your Narrative, is the simplicity and calmness with which you describe scenes and actions which might well "move the very stones to rise and mutiny" against the National Institution which makes them possible...I trust and believe that your Narrative will have a wide circulation. I am sure it deserves it. At least, a man must be differently constituted from me, who can rise from the perusal of your Narrative without feeling that he understands slavery better, and hates it worse, than he ever did before. Edmund Quincy, letter (July 1, 1847) published in Narrative of William W. Brown External links Author:William Wells Brown 135 Documenting the American South page (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) GoodReads page Category:1814 births Category:1884 deaths Category:Abolitionists Category:Playwrights from the United States Category:Novelists from the United States Category:Historians from the United States Category:People from Kentucky Category:African Americans Category:Slaves