Frederick Douglass once said: Any man may say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. If… - Alice Dunbar Nelson

The Negro youth of the land recites the Gettysburg speech, and it is right that he should do so; but does he know Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The Negro youth of the land admires Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address, but does he know Douglass’ splendid tribute to the man who wrote the Second Inaugural address, when the freedmen of this country erected the Lincoln monument at Washington? The Negro youth rolls over his tongue the witty epigrams of the mighty Lincoln, but has he been made familiar with some of the pithy aphorisms of his own Douglass?

To you, of the younger generation, what a marvel, what a world of meaning in those words — “I have been taught patience.” We, who fret and chafe because the whole world will not bend its will to our puny strivings, and turn its whole course that we might have our unripe desires fulfilled, should read and re-read of the man who could wait, because he knew that time and all eternity would be bent to meet his desires in time.

But Frederick Douglass, whom we honor equally, has not yet had the full meed of his praise, and we celebrate the passing of his natal day with a finer appreciation of what he has done for us, and of what his life will mean, not only to the men who were his contemporaries, nor yet to us of a later generation, but to the race of the future; to the children yet unborn. History has not yet given him his rightful place on its pages, but the history of. tomorrow will place him where he should be — with the courageous, the wise, the far-seeing. It remains for us, his own people, to pour out at his altar the incense he deserves, the praise he merits; to let his life be a beacon to light us to that higher, truer patriotism — the fearlessness of real manhood.