Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 20

18. Fredrick Douglass, “The Color Line,” North American Review (June 1881): 567-77.

Essay on the pervasiveness and strength of racial prejudice. “Few evils are less accessible to the force of reason, or more tenacious of life and power, than a long-standing prejudice. It is a moral disorder, which creates the conditions necessary for its own existence, and fortifies itself by refusing all contradiction. It paint s a hateful picture according to its own diseased imagination, and distorts the features of the fancied original to suit the portrait. As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.”