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376 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Fifty years have passed since I entered upon that work, and now that it
is ended, I find myself summoned again by the popular voice and by what is
called the negro problem, to come a second time upon the witness stand and
give evidence upon disputed points concerning myself and my emancipated
brothers and sisters who, though free, are yet oppressed and are in as much
need of an advocate as before they were set free. Though this is not alto-
gether as agreeable to me as was my first mission, it is one that comes with
such commanding authority as to compel me to accept it as a present duty.
In it I am pelted with all sorts of knotty questions, some of which might be
difficult even for Humboldt, Cuvier, or Darwin, were they alive, to answer.
They are questions which range over the whole field of science, learning and
philosophy, and some descend to the depths of impertinent, unmannerly and
vulgar curiosity. To be able to answer the higher range of these questions I
should be profoundly versed in psychology, anthropology, ethnology, sociol-
ogy, theology, biology and all the other ologies, philosophies and sciences.
There is no disguising the fact that the American people arc much interested
and mystified about the mere matter of color as connected with manhood. It
seems to them that color has some moral or immoral qualities and especially
the latter. They do not feel quite reconciled to the idea that a man of different
color from themselves should have all the human rights claimed by them-
selves. When an unknown man is spoken of in their presence, the first ques-
tion that arises in the average American mind concerning him and which
must be answered is, Of what color is he? and he rises or falls in estimation
by the answer given. It is not whether he is a good man or a bad man. That
does not seem of primary importance. Hence I have often been bluntly and
sometimes very rudely asked, of what color my mother was, and of what
color was my father? In what proportion does the blood of the various races
mingle in my veins, especially, how much white blood and how much black
blood entered into my composition'? Whether I was not part Indian as well
as African and Caucasian? Whether I considered myself more African than
Caucasian or the reverse? Whether I derived my intelligence from my father
or from my mother, from my white or from my black blood? Whether per-
sons of mixed blood are as strong and healthy as persons of either of the
races whose blood they inherit? Whether persons of mixed blood do perma-
nently remain of the mixed complexion or finally take on the complexion of
one or the other of the two or more races of which they may be composed?
Whether they live as long and raise as large families as other people?
Whether they inherit only evil from both parents and good from neither?
Whether evil dispositions are more transmissible than good? Why did I