ABSTRACT
In June 1863, July 1884, and May 1886, Frederick Douglass published three essays entitled, respectively, “The Present and the Future of the Colored Race in America,” “The Future of the Negro,” and “The Future of the Colored Race.” The middle essay was written about two decades after the Dred Scott decision in the United States, and a few months before the continent of Africa was permanently carved up in Berlin among competing European powers. Yet the first paragraph starts in this tentative, cautious tone:
It would require the ken of a statesman and the vision of a prophet combined to tell with certainty what will be the ultimate future of the colored people of the United States, and to neither of these qualifications can I lay claim. We have known the colored man long as a slave, but we have not known him long as a freeman and as an American citizen. One thing, however, may safely be laid down as probable, and that is that the Negro, in one form and complexion or another, may be counted upon as a permanent element of the population of the United States. 1
