The Place of Cuba in the Global History of Reconstruction

Frederick Douglass addressed a crowd that had gathered in honor of the twenty-sixth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia.Douglass, the most prominent black abolitionist of the century, had recently turned seventy.He might, at this age, have been expected to look back proudly on a career that had helped bring about the liberation of four million slaves.Instead, he despaired.On that day, he described in stark terms what he had witnessed on a recent tour of the Southern States.In the South, "the landholder imposes his price, exacts his conditions, and the landless Negro must comply or starve... we shall find him a deserted, a defrauded, a swindled, and an outcast man-in law free, in fact a slave; in law a citizen, in fact an alien; in law a voter, in fact, a disfranchised man."Emancipation, Douglass

Geography · Cuban History and Society · History