As the Reverend Jeremiah Wright saga continues in all its opportunistic glory, Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell reminds us that Frederick Douglass, "speaking in the tradition of the biblical prophets," was also "a master of the jeremiad." Consider the professor's quotation of the following exemplar of Douglass' prophetic pronoucements:
"Statesmen of America beware what you do! The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow.
"The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot fathers."
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