Frederick Douglass - The Suffragent

“Frederick Douglass – The Suffragent,” was a talk that I, Rachel DeGuzman, delivered in the plenary of the 2018 Seneca Falls Revisited Convention on August 24, 2018. I share it at the request of a few people who were in the audience. (Please note that this was written to be delivered as a talk, not printed and read)

Thank you, Sharon Nelson, the conference co-chairs – Deborah Hughes and Irma McClaurin and everyone who was involved in organizing this important event in the continuum in the struggle for women’s equality.

When Sharon Nelson called and asked me to give this talk – she asked me to speak on Frederick Douglass the feminist. I don’t think it was 24 hours before she reached out again and told me that the correct term was not feminist but rather Suffragent. That made sense to me. It grounded me in a time when the cause for women’s equality was not fought by feminists, but by suffragists - and the battleground was not yet at the ballot box. In fact, not all the women and men who attended the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention were pro-women’s suffrage. This was an important frame for me, as I considered Frederick Douglass’s remarkable, universal humanitarianism – especially remarkable at that time. I am honored to reflect on Douglass’ the Suffragent in this bicentennial year of his birth and as we revisit the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention as well as the Rochester Women’s Rights Convention that occurred two weeks later.

In preparation for this talk, I read a lot of Frederick Douglass’s speeches and writings on women’s equality and suffrage. Although he was an ardent ally of women’s suffrage, in his oratory he specifically deferred to women as experts in defining what their equality looked like. I found that to be a very modern perspective. Understanding how important a woman’s gaze or lens was to the authenticity of the movement. Maybe that is why he was such a powerful and effective advocate and why his words still resonate today.

In an issue of The North Star, published on July 28, 1848 – in the week after the Seneca Falls Convention, Frederick Douglass wrote in an article titled THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN. He said, “We should not, however, do justice to our own convictions, or to the excellent persons connected with this infant movement, if we did not, in this connection, offer a few remarks on the general subject which the Convention met to consider, and the objects they seek to attain. In, doing so, we are not insensible that the bare mention of this truly important subject in any other than terms of contemptuous ridicule and scornful disfavor, is likely to excite against the fury of bigotry and the folly of prejudice. A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are so called the wise and the good of our land, than would be discussion of the rights of woman…While it is impossible for us to go into this subject at length, and dispose of the various objections which are often urged against such a doctrine as that of female equality, we are free to say, that in respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go further and express our conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for woman. All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and accountable being, is equally true of woman and if that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to women the exercise of the elective franchise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the land. Our doctrine is, that 'Right is of no sex.' We therefore bid the women engaged in the movement Godspeed.”

Though we don’t face the same barriers to equality that those pioneering suffragists did in 1848, we can imagine Douglass is wishing us Godspeed today as we continue to struggle for equal representation and pay, fight against sexual assault and rape, rise up against all male panels making decisions about and for women – as we run for office in record numbers and strive to welcome marginalized women to the table with agency and equity.

Frederick Douglass’s commitment to the rights of women was not based on expediency. It was from deeply held beliefs. The motto of the North Star Newspaper masthead read, “Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of Us All, and All We Are Brethern.” The newspaper and its motto predated the convention. This was Douglass’s vision of the way the world should be.

His was a radical and progressive perspective especially juxtaposed to the fact that women lost the right to vote – that some had briefly held- in all states in 1777 – the year after the Declaration of Independence and then again after the passing of the Bill of Rights in 1789 when women were also denied property rights and the right to enter into legal contracts.

In 1848, there existed a strict patriarchal hierarchy – men controlled all wealth, political power. They had control over both the public and private spheres.

Yet, somehow – Frederick Douglass – a man whose early life was one of constant struggle-followed by the threat of discovery and re-enslavement- with little opportunity for study or scholarly reflection – rejected the prevailing order of men’s supremacy over women.

Just consider that when Frederick Douglass attended the 1848 conventions he was 30 years old. A husband and father. He had only lived in Rochester for one year at that time. The North Star newspaper he founded was established in 1847. Through respected, the newspaper was not profitable. In 1848, it was only 21 years since he briefly started reading lessons, 10 years since he had escaped slavery, 7 years since he first spoke at a Bristol Anti-slavery meeting, and two years since he had been legally free.

His commitment to women’s suffrage endured despite personal adversity and frictions which arose with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony over voting rights for Black men. His advocacy for women’s rights continued after the abolition of slavery, through reconstruction, and the establishment of Jim Crow laws until his death on February 20, 1895.

In 1888, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech titled “On Suffrage” for the International Council of Women, in Washington, D.C. He said. “There are few facts in my humble history to which I look back with more satisfaction than to the fact, recorded in the history of the woman-suffrage movement, that I was sufficiently enlightened at that early-day, and when only a few years from slavery, to support your resolution for woman suffrage. I have done very little in this world in which to glory except this one act- and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from slavery. It was for myself; when I advocated for emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act…

He went on to say, “The relation of man to woman has the advantage to tell us that - what is always will be, without end. But we have heard this old argument before, and, if we live very long we shall hear it again. When any aged error shall be assailed, and any old abuse is to be removed, we shall meet this same old argument. Man has been so long the King and woman the subject- man has been so long accustomed to command and woman to obey – that both parties have been hardened into their respective places, and thus has been piled up a mountain of iron against woman’s enfranchisement. The same thing confronted us in our conflicts with slavery…All good causes are mutually helpful. The benefit accruing from this movement for the equal rights of woman are not confined or limited to a woman only. They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of mankind everywhere and in all ages. It was an example and a prophecy of what can be accomplished against strongly opposing forces, against time-hallowed abuses, against deeply entrenched error, against worldwide usage, and against the settled judgement of mankind, by a few earnest women, clad only in the panoply of truth, and determined to live or die in what they considered a righteous cause…”

One of the signatures of Rochester’s Frederick Douglass Bicentennial initiative– in this year of celebration, reflection and visioning is to pose the question, what would Frederick Douglass say about various concerns and events in our day?

In today’s world, in an era when we are still guided by identity, partisanship and self-interest – even in our advocacies for equality, I challenge you to do like Frederick Douglass, the Suffragent did, and stand up for yourself---stand up for your people ---and at the same time - nobly stand up, without self-interest, for others and for what in your heart you know is just!

Thank you!