They will not, I trust, think worse of my brethren for being discontented with so hard a lot as that of slavery, nor disown me for their fellow creature merely because I deeply feel the unmerited sufferings which my countrymen endure. Yet, strong as the prejudices against us are, it will not, I hope on this side of the Atlantic, be considered as a crime for a poor African not to confess himself a being of an inferior order to those who happen to be of a different color from himself, or be thought very presumptuous in one who is but a Negro to offer to the happy subjects of this free government some reflection upon the wretched condition of his country¬men. The West Indian planters could not, if they thought us men, so wantonly spill our blood nor could the natives of this land of liberty, deeming us of the same species with themselves, submit to be instrumental in enslaving us, or think us proper subjects of a sordid commerce. I am one of that unfortunate race of men who are distinguished from the rest of the human species by a black skin and woolly hair-disadvantages of very little moment in themselves, but which prove to us a source of greatest misery, because there are men who will not be persuaded that it is possible for a human soul to be lodged within a sable body. This unknown early activist of West Indian birth who lived and was educated in England delivered this eloquent speech sometime in 1789, It was published in American Museum (1789) and it is now on the website
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