Frederick Douglass On Women's Rights

by Frederick Douglass, Philip S. Foner (Editor)

In their long, continuing struggle for equality, American women have had to rely primarily on their own resources, which have been considerable. Yet many men have helped advance their cause. Perhaps foremost among them was the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. According to the women of the time, Douglass was their preeminent male supporter. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "He was the only man I ever saw who understood the degradation of the disfranchisement of women." This book collects the speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass on women's rights. Since suffrage was the major concern of the movement, the issue of voting was primary among Douglass's themes; however, he also spoke and wrote resolutely on the need for women to reach their full potential by participating in every phase of American society and in every aspect of decision-making. No one was more insistent that the oppression of women violated the principles proclaimed at the birth of the American Republic. He was, in short, in favor of "absolute justice and perfect equality" for women. And because of his pride in his own race, he never failed to remind the white women who led the movement that black women endured an even greater oppression in white, male-dominated society than they did. Always eloquent and rarely less than inspiring, Frederick Douglass on Women's Rights presents the words of one of America's greatest spokesmen on one of the most important issues of the nineteenth century, words which still ring with truth and power today.

Genres: Feminism, History

190 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 1976

About the author

Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and feminist. Having escaped from slavery at age 20, he took the name Frederick Douglass for himself and became an advocate of abolition. Douglass traveled widely, and often perilously, to lecture against slavery.

His first of three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with fellow abolitionist Martin R. Delany to publish a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, North Star. Douglass was the only man to speak in favor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial plank of woman suffrage at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Douglass also promoted woman suffrage in his North Star. Douglass and Stanton remained lifelong friends.

In 1870 Douglass launched The New National Era out of Washington, D.C. He was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party to run with Victoria Woodhull as presidential candidate in 1872. He became U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, and was later appointed minister resident and consul-general to Haiti. His District of Columbia home is a national historic site. D. 1895.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1...

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhi...

http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederi...

http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm

http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits...

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text is a useful and enlightening collection of Douglass's most prominent (and most of all) his women's rights related writings, including speeches, newspaper editorials, and personal correspondence with suffragists, public figures, and other activists. It consists of a lengthy and engaging introduction that outlines Douglass's relationship to the women's rights movement. What keeps this work from being an outstanding text is in its lack of probing Douglass's oversights in his work, for example, how he spoke primarily to a racist, classist middle class white woman's movement without pointing to other, more inclusive perspectives for women of color. A highlight of the book is the re-printing of Mary Church Terrell's memorializing address of Douglass's role in the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

[Roderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

highly astute observations by an impressive intellectual: should be mandatory reading in schools (secondary & college)