Kindle Notes & Highlights
SUMNER ARGUED THAT the integration of streetcars achieved three objectives: “to sustain the principles of humanity, to uphold human rights, and to vindicate human equality.” These three phrases shed enormous light on Sumner’s political philosophy, which informed his outlook on the constitutional transformation the Thirteenth Amendment presaged.
Having used the nascent term “human rights” in the international context in 1863, he began invoking it in nearly every speech he gave about Black rights in 1864. In so doing, he may have been implying that rights afforded to Black men should also be afforded to women, who were textually excluded from similar phrases like “the rights of man.”
