No colored man is really free in a slaveholding state.
 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). copy citation

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Author Frederick Douglass
Source My Bondage and My Freedom
Topic state
Date 1855
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/202/202-h/202-h.htm

Context

“I now find that I could have landed in no part of the United States, where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast to the condition of the free people of color in Baltimore, than I found here in New Bedford. No colored man is really free in a slaveholding state. He wears the badge of bondage while [270] nominally free, and is often subjected to hardships to which the slave is a stranger; but here in New Bedford, it was my good fortune to see a pretty near approach to freedom on the part of the colored people.” source