"It is not the light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

"Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He w…"

"What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?"

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder an…"

"I contend that the Negro, as a man, can and ought to be a voter, and if he cannot be one, his condition is not removed from that of a chattel."