Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Visions of America - New Bedford, MA
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N 41° 38.111 W 070° 55.660
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'FOR MY PART, I SHOULD PREFER DEATH
TO HOPELESS BONDAGE.'
Waymark Code: WMK712
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 02/22/2014
Views: 1
Frederick Douglass settled with his wife in New Bedford and began his career as a preacher and orator here. This quote is on a monument in his honor on the grounds of New Bedford's City Hall.
A bronze plaque set on a vertical stone slab has Douglass' depiction in relief and reads:
"FREDERICK DOUGLASS
1818-1895
'FOR MY PART, I SHOULD PREFER DEATH
TO HOPELESS BONDAGE.'
NEW BEDFORD 1838-1841
DEDICATED OCTOBER 1996"
This website (
visit link) also provides the two sentences before the quote:
"In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage."
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818[3] – February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave.
Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his experiences in slavery in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became influential in its support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free." Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Without his approval, he became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable and small Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass held multiple public offices.
Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant, famously quoted as saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.'"