On My Birthday

Maryland, June 13, 2003

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”

– Frederick Douglass