“Our Composite Nationality”
Speech | Boston, Massachusetts | December 7, 1869
Arguing in favor of immigration from East Asia and beyond, Douglass claimed that American composite nationality requires acceptance of common humanity and equality. As calls for Chinese exclusion intensified, he put forth a vision for America as a unique exemplar of multiracial, multiethnic nationality.
We have for a long time hesitated to adopt and carry out the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the Republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality.
We are a country of all extremes, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number. . . .
I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible.
Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. . . .
I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.
Frederick Douglass, “OUR COMPOSITE NATIONALITY,” Speech, December 7, 1869, in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 4: 1864-1880, by Frederick Douglass, John W. Blassingame, and John R. McKivigan, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.), 244-253.
