Colonization (Original Recording‪)‬

As a former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass was an outspoken leader for African Americans. He wrote this text in response to the American Colonization Society, who believed that black Americans should emigrate back to Africa. Douglass staunchly opposed this notion, saying it was nonsense to displace eight million Americans to a country they didn’t know. He insisted that all Americans - black, white, mixed, or other - were entitled to equal citizenship in the country they were born in, for “if the American people could endure the Negro’s presence while a slave, they certainly can and ought to endure his presence as a free man.”