In a famous 1893 speech, he said: “Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their Constitution.” Or as W. E. B. Du Bois put it in The Souls of Black Folk: Douglass “in his old age, still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood.”
g. alan tarr