..course I knew it wouldn't be easy

No Struggle, No Progress Frederick Douglass, 1857

The whole history of progress of human liberty Shows that all concessions Yet made to her august claims Have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle  There is no progress.   Those who profess to favor freedom, And yet deprecate agitation, Are men [and women] who want crops  Without plowing up the ground, They want rain  Without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean Without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; Or it may be a physical one; Or it may be both moral and physical; But it must be a struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what any people Will quietly submit to  And you have found the exact measure Of injustice and wrong  Which will be imposed upon them, And these will continue till they are resisted. . .  The limits. . . are prescribed  By the endurance  Of those whom. . [are] oppress[ed].   Men [and Women] may not get all they pay for in this world, but they pay for all they get. If we ever get free  from the oppressions and wrong heaped on us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this  by labor,  by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be by our lives and the lives of others