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“The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul.”
Stanton begins from individual personhood before social roles, arguing that each human being has a distinct moral and civic existence that cannot be reduced to relationship status.
Source note: Solitude of Self, address delivered before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, January 18, 1892; the Library of Congress preserves Stanton’s manuscript materials for the speech.
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“We believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race.”
Du Bois connects fair recognition of ability with personal liberty and worth, arguing that racial identity should not erase an individual’s claim to equitable consideration.
Source note: The Conservation of Races, Academy Creed, point 6; Project Gutenberg #5685. This is Du Bois’s own programmatic statement. The essay’s broader nineteenth-century racial theory remains historical context and is not presented as current biological science.
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“I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.”
Liberty is described in civic, bodily and spiritual terms, joining political rights with the ordinary freedom to live without racial restriction.
Source note: Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, “Credo,” originally published in 1920. Project Gutenberg #15210. The sentence continues with freedom of association, movement, thought, dream and work “uncursed by color.”
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“I WAS A MAN NOW.”
The emphatic line records Douglass’s restored sense of manhood and dignity after resisting physical domination; it belongs to a specific autobiographical struggle against enslavement.
Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom, immediately after Douglass describes his resistance to Covey; capitalization follows the represented Project Gutenberg text.
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“I was a changed being after that fight.”
Douglass identifies resistance to Covey as a decisive psychological turning point in which a previously crushed sense of agency and personhood begins to return.
Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom, account of the fight with Edward Covey; Douglass explicitly presents the episode as a turning point in his life under slavery.
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“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.”
Du Bois refuses the premise that racial exclusion determines intellectual belonging: in the world of culture and thought he claims equal access to Shakespeare and other major writers without asking permission from the color line.
Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Training of Black Men,” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence opens a longer passage in which Du Bois moves “across the color line” among Shakespeare, Balzac, Dumas, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius; the context is Black cultural and intellectual dignity under segregation.