Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
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L i p E O F FREDERICK DOU6LASS.
trial. Here, even more than elsewhere, he will
find all presumptions of law and evidence against
him. It is not so much the business of his enemies
to prove him guilty, as it is the business of
himself to prove his innocence. The reasonable
doubt which is usually interposed to save the life
and liberty of a white man charged with crime,
seldom has any force or effect when a colored
man is accused of crime. Indeed, color is a far
better protection to the white criminal, than anything
else. In certain parts of our country, when
any white man wishes to commit a heinous offense,
he wisely resorts to burnt cork and blackens
his face, and goes forth under the similitude
of a negro. When the deed is done, a little soap
and water destroys his identity, and he goes unwhipped
of justice. Some negro is at once suspected
and brought before the victim of wrong
for identification, and there is never much trouble
here, for as in the eyes of many white people all
negroes look alike, and as the man who was
arrested and who sits in the dock in irons is
black, he is undoubtedly the criminal.
"A still greater misfortune to the negro is that
the press, that engine of omnipotent power, usually
tries him in advance of the courts, and, when
once his case is decided in the newspapers, it is
easy for the jury to bring in its verdict of 'guilty
as indicted.'