Gates, later in the book, wondered what Douglass would think about the fact that 154 years after he spoke those words the “old snake” would still be spreading its venom. So he was raising the question since he knew the “old snake” of racism would change its skin, morph and return in other guises. recounts the comment in his new book, Stony the Road, the title of which was taken from the second stanza of the Black National Anthem.įelt in the day that hope unborn had died Ĭome to the place on which our fathers sighed?”ĭouglass knew that while freedom had been officially achieved for four million blacks in America, equality would remain elusive for some years to come. “In what skin will the old snake come forth?” asked Frederick Douglass rhetorically at the 1865 Anti-Slavery Society convention, the first one held since the end of the Civil War a few months prior. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow Stony the Road, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
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