I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for my name.

- William Wells Brown

When this boy was brought to Dr. Young, his name being William, the same as mine, my mother was ordered to change mine to something else. This, at th…

- William Wells Brown

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

- William Wells Brown

Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing states, yet no part of our slave-ho…

- William Wells Brown

The duty I owe to the slave, to truth, and to God, demands that I should use my pen and tongue so long as life and health are vouchsafed to me to emp…

- William Wells Brown

All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.

- William Wells Brown

This is called 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'; it is called the 'asylum of the oppressed,' and some have been foolish enough to cal…

- William Wells Brown

Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll c…

- William Wells Brown

This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an American slaveholder could have discovered that a man …

- William Wells Brown