How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)
Quote #1
There are 72 crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. (46)
Well, that sounds unfair. The United States (and, to be fair, everywhere else) has a long history of prosecuting crime differently depending on who commits the crime. Does this history still affect the legal system today?
Quote #2
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we are called upon to prove that we are men? (52-53)
This is just a looong list of all the things Black people do just like other people. Douglass piles on this evidence so that no one can reasonably deny the humanity of Black people and so that his listeners can see what they have in common with Black people. He says it's messed up to observe all this humanity and then ask Black people to prove that they're human.