J. Sella Martin Quotes

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The simple fact is this: prejudice and proscription in free society during the time of slavery kept the white people away from the Negroes, so that they knew, and still know, but little of colored people; and the slaveholder, though knowing better, found it in his interest to keep his knowledge to himself.

J. Sella Martin

I hold that that is a false logic which talks about good slaveholders.... It is folly for us to talk about the slaveholders being kind. Cruelty is part and parcel of the system. If slavery is right at all, then all its terrors and horrors,—the whip, the manacle, the thumbscrew, the paddle, the stake, the gibbet—are right also; if it is not right, then all these are wrong.

J. Sella Martin

Certainly, great injustice is done to a people who are excluded on account of a complexion which they did not give themselves.

J. Sella Martin

J. Sella Martin

J. Sella Martin

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Born: September 27, 1832

Died: 1876 (aged 43)

Bio: John Sella Martin was a noted abolitionist in Boston, Massachusetts and a pastor, who had escaped from slavery in Alabama. He was a leading African-American preacher and activist for equality before the American Civil War, traveling to England to lecture against slavery.

J. Sella Martin on Wikipedia

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