Ancestors Toussaint L'Overture & Frederick Douglas

“Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.” Thomas Jefferson

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FATHER OF AITIJ (HAITI)

ANCESTOR
Francois Dominique Toussaint L'Overture
BORN: 1743
CROSSED OVER :1803

To his former OWNER/MASTER: "Gently, overseer. There is today a greater difference between me and you than there formerly was between you and me. Return to the plantation, be inflexible, but just; make the blacks work and so add to the prosperity of yourself and the administration."

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AMERICAN LIBERATOR

ANCESTOR Frederick Douglass
Born:1817
Crossed over:1895

“ We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality....”

Frederick Douglass

MAY THE ANCESTORS BE PLEASED WITH HIS EFFORTS

WE POUR LIBATIONS GIVING THANKS

FOR THE STRUGGLES OF OUR PREDECESSORS

ASHE