The Frederick Douglass Papers

The Frederick Douglass Papers The Frederick Douglass Papers collects, edits, and publishes the papers of Frederick Douglass.

**** Blassingame, Professor of History at Yale.

The Frederick Douglass Papers originated at Yale University, as a result of consultations among the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and John W. With Blassingame serving as editor, the project began work in 1973. For almost twenty years the project was housed at Yale University, staffed by scholars at that i

nstitution. From 1992-98, West Virginia University housed the project, and now the Frederick Douglass Papers resides at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) as a unit of the Institute for American Thought of the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indianapolis. The project has been headed since 1993 by John R. McKivigan, currently the Mary O’Brien Gibson Professor of History at IUPUI.

04/17/2026

"Find out just what any people will submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and will continue til they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies," August 3, 1857, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:204

On this day multiple times over the years, Frederick Douglass spoke at Emancipation Day celebrations in Washington, D.C...
04/16/2026

On this day multiple times over the years, Frederick Douglass spoke at Emancipation Day celebrations in Washington, D.C.

(Washington, DC, 1883). Other texts in Washington , 17 April 1883; Washington , 21 April I883; Philip S. Foner, ed., , 5 vols. (1950-75), 4: 354-71 (hereafter cited as ).

04/15/2026

"A wise man has said that few people are found better than their laws, but many have been found worse; and the American people are no exception to this rule."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "The American Constitution and Slavery," March 26, 1860, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:349

04/14/2026

On this day in 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered the speech "The Freedmen's Monument to Abraham Lincoln" at the dedication ceremony of the monument with John Mercer Langston in Washington, D.C.

04/13/2026

"And when all hope is gone from the hearts of the laboring-class of the old world, they can come across the sea to the new. If they could not do that their crushed hearts would break under increasing burdens. The right to emigrate is one of the most useful and precious of all rights."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States," September 12, 1879, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:531

04/12/2026

"All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which coms through meanness, trickery, fraud, and dishonor, is but emptiness and will only be a tornment to its possessor."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "Self-Made Men," March 1893, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:561

04/11/2026

"A man's troubles are always half disposed of, when he finds endurance his only remedy."
-Frederick Douglass, Autobiography: My Bo***ge and My Freedom, 1855, p. 39

04/10/2026

"Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another, recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest, and ... your republic will stand and flourish forever."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "Lessons of the Hour," January 9, 1894, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:607

04/09/2026

On this day in 1870, Frederick Douglass spoke at the American Anti-Slavery Society's Fifteenth Amendment Ratification celebration along with Henry H Garnet, Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward Howe, George W Julian, and others in Apollo Hall in New York, NY. Douglass stayed for the commemorative social reunion along with Tilton, Phillips, William Henry Channing, and others.

04/08/2026

"Prejudice sets all logic at defiance. It takes no account of reason or consistency."
-Frederick Douglass, Autobiography: Life and Times, 1881, p. 401

04/07/2026

"All wishes, all aspirations, all hopes, all fears, all doubts, all determinations, grow stronger precisely in proportion as they get themselves expressed in words, forms [,] colours, and actions."
-Frederick Douglass, Speech: "Pictures and Progress," December 3, 1861, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:461

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