A Pertinent Question Lyrics

"Is it not astonishing, that while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses and constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, and copper, silver and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, breeding sheep and cattle on the hillside; living, moving, acting, thinking, planning; living in families as husbands, wives, and children; and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for immortal life beyond the grave;—is it not astonishing, I say, that we are called upon to prove that we are men?"

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About

Genius Annotation

Frederick Douglass’s “A Pertinent Question” appeared in The Freedmen’s Book (1865) edited by Lydia Maria Child. The book included poems by Phillis Wheatley, Frances E. W. Harper, and George Moses Horton; Jourdon Anderson’s “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master;” short essays; and Douglass’s single-sentence question.

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