"You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors…while we are ploughing, planting and reaping... we are called upon to prove that we are men!...You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor."
Frederick Douglass, from his "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. You can also hear an excerpt of that speech – performed by James Earl Jones in this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour.
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