Why Is the Negro Lynched? — Frederick Douglass

Why Is the Negro Lynched?: No man should come before an audience like the one by whose presence I am now honored, without a noble object and a fixed and earnest purpose. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have the qualifications indicated, to speak to you this evening. I am here to speak for, and to defend, so far as I can do so within the bounds of truth, a long-suffering people, and one just now subject to much misrepresentation and persecution. Charges are at this time preferred against them, more damaging and distressing than any which they have been called upon to meet since their emancipation. I propose to give you a colored man and #39;s view of the unhappy relations at present existing between the white and colored people of the Southern States of our union. We have had the Southern white man and #39;s view of the subject. It has been presented with abundant repetition and with startling emphasis, colored by his peculiar environments. We have also..