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Dismantling Racism Resource Book

A Philosophy of Reform

Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the

progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims

have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all

absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do

this or it does nothing. If there is not struggle there is no progress. Those who

profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops

without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They

want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a

moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it

must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it

never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact

amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will

continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The

limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass
Letter to an abolitionist associate, 1849

Dismantling Racism Project 5 Western States Center