Frederick Douglass - Orator of Progress

Frederick Douglass spoke the sentence on this wall in August 1857 at Canandaigua, New York, in an address marking the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies. It sits in the middle of an argument about how freedom is actually won. People who say they favor freedom but dislike agitation, he went on, "want crops without plowing up the ground," and "rain without thunder and lightning."

He knew the ground. Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass escaped in 1838, and by 1857 he had been free for nineteen years and had edited his own newspaper in Rochester, New York, since 1847. He had lectured in Britain and Ireland as well as across the North, and he was one of the best-known speakers in the country.

Here he stands at a wooden lectern in a dark coat and bow tie, white hair swept back, one hand resting on the lectern and the other open in mid-gesture. Behind him a flag fades into a sky of storm gold and brown. A length of chain lies coiled at the foot of the lectern. The quotation sits in cream serif below, over his name in capitals.