Everyone should have a voice

The story of Frederick Douglass’s fight for universal suffrage from the Civil War to the rise of Jim Crow. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast and the following message come from Allianz Travel Insurance. Your flight booked, your lungs suddenly battling bronchitis? Travel insurance helps protect your travel budget so you can book again once you feel better. Learn more at allianztravelinsurance.com.

• 0:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from Throughline and NPR. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the US that began 250 years ago. And of course, at the heart of these stories are the people that made history happen, people who had a bold vision for the America they wanted to see despite the obstacles.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

• 1:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest minds in American history. Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Douglass lived through the Civil War, emancipation, black men getting the right to vote, and the beginning of the terrors and humiliations of Jim Crow. And through all of that, he kept coming back to one thing, a sacred right he believed was at the heart of American democracy: voting.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

• 1:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today on the show, Ramtin and I bring you the story of one man's dedication to changing how American democracy worked for everyone by fighting for the right for all people to have a say. That story, right after a quick break.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Quo. You run a job, in a meeting, slammed, and a customer calls. If nobody picks up, they go to your competitor. That's why over 90,000 companies choose Quo. The business phone system built for busy teams. Smart call routing sends calls to the right person. Shared numbers let your team cover for each other, and an AI agent picks up when nobody can, capturing every lead so nothing falls through the cracks. Always say hello with Quo. Try it free at quo.com/NPR.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  This message comes from NetSuite. AI is changing the way businesses get work done, the questions they ask, the decisions they make, and the routine tasks they can hand off. NetSuite understands, so that's why they put together a free expert guide you need to grab today, "Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work." Download to see exactly how AI is reshaping work across every part of your organization and how to make sure you come out ahead. Get your free guide at netsuite.com-story.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  This message comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp is in-network with more than 125 health plans, with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Don't have eligible insurance? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/NPR to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp.com/NPR.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Will you repeat the mistakes of your fathers who sinned ignorantly?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Will the country be peaceful, united, and happy? Or troubled, divided, and miserable?

• 4:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country that lived up to the ideals of its founding fathers, where all people could vote, universal suffrage. And he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality. In the face of suffering, he hoped. In the face of setbacks, he hoped. In the face of violence, he hoped. And in the face of suppression, Frederick Douglass hoped.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  From the very moment he gets on a platform as a speaker, as early as 1841, and then endlessly across the north is the itinerant abolitionist order in the 1840s into the 1850s. Douglass was a firm, fierce believer in what the 19th century loved to call the natural rights tradition. And what we generally mean by that is that tradition of inalienable rights, rights that are either from God or from nature.

• 5:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is David Blight. He's a history professor at Yale University and author of the biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Douglass once referred to the first principles of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, the four first principles: liberty, equality, popular sovereignty, meaning governments exist by the consent of the governed. And the last was the right of revolution. Exactly what he meant by equality. He's always been open to debate. But Douglass loved those principles, loved those creeds. He loved the Declaration of Independence in that sense. He didn't like the way it was practiced, but he loved the creed.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  He said, "Natural rights are like the air you breathe. They belong to no one group, no one person, no one country. They belong to everybody." And the right to vote to Douglas, in something called a republic, if it could ever live up to those trees, was the most sacred right of all. He saw it not just as a kind of human right to participate in one's political system, but he saw it as a power by which people could protect themselves. Douglas really believed that, and he said it a thousand times over, that the right to

• 7:06Speaker 04

  vote for African-Americans in particular, especially once they were liberated by the Civil War, was their greatest self-protection.

• 7:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  After the Civil War was over, nearly 4 million formerly enslaved Black Americans were free.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Right away, the radical Republicans, their leadership, anyway. And let's remember, it was the original Republicans. The Republicans of Abraham Lincoln came out for Black suffrage.

• 7:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  The radical Republicans. If you've been listening to this whole series, we've brought up the radical Republicans a number of times. They were resolute abolitionists, leading up to and during the Civil War. And now, they're pushing for the Black vote.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Now, that had multiple motives. One of the motives, and it should not be diminished, is that they believed this was a right. The second motive was, if you want to spread the Republican Party into the South, you have a whole new constituency to do it with here with Black voters. So, the right to vote becomes the heartbeat of radical Republican Reconstruction plans as soon as the war is over. Douglas! Is himself a radical Republican at this point. He's just not an elected official. He has nothing to do with designing these plans. He is, as always, the spokesman. He is the orator. He is the writer.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  He's the outsider, trying to beat his way inside, you know, to that Republican Party. But Douglas starts preaching for the right to vote immediately. In fact, he's doing it during the war.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  We may be asked, "Why we want it?" I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  This speech called "What the Black Man Wants" is a speech he took on the road, and it's a fascinating oration, because it is mostly about the right to vote. It's also about wanting and demanding dignity, wanting and demanding safety, et cetera.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote, and my heart and voice go with that movement to extend suffrage to women. But that question rests upon another basis than which our right rests.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  He especially used the idea of the service and sacrifice of black soldiers. If we are, you know, human enough to serve in uniform, if we are human enough to go die in war for the country, then we are human enough to have the right to vote. You know, if we are capable of this, then we are capable of that.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures. You declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means, lead us to undervalue ourselves.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  "There is no argument," he says, "against this right to vote." "You can say that black people who were enslaved are not as well-educated, but they know how to till a field. They know how power gets used, because it's been used on them for generations. They know how political will is based on how you can bend it out in society. They know something about economic power, because they were slaves living under this system." So he says over and over and over, "Don't tell us we're not educated as a means of not letting us vote. Help us get educated, and we'll show you how to vote."

• 11:08Speaker 04

  He so often used this argument, that the right to vote was the ultimate, sacred form of protection in a republic.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  "If I were in a monarchical government, or an autocratic or aristocratic government, where the few bore rule and the many were subject, there would be no special stigma resting upon me, because I did not exercise the elective franchise. But here were universal suffrages, the rule, where that is the fundamental idea of the government. To rule us out is to make us an exception, to brand us with the stigma of inferiority, and to invite to our heads the missiles of those about us. Therefore, I want the franchise for the black man."

• 12:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the aftermath of the Civil War, a time that would come to be known as the Reconstruction Era, the country was reinventing itself. It was a moment of great hope and promise for black Americans in particular. The country was embracing progressive reforms. Black politicians were being elected to southern state governments, and even to Congress, for the first time. Laws against racial discrimination were being implemented. The future looked bright.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Probably the most openly hopeful brief period of Douglas's life was from about 1867 to 1870 or so.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  During that brief moment, that window, he writes a speech that he took on the road for a while, called "The Composite Nation."

• 12:55Speaker 02

  "We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one-fifth of all the globe. All morals, social, and geographical causes conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other overpopulated countries. Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either."

• 13:20Speaker 04

  This is an amazing speech where Douglas says, "The United States now has a chance to do what no other people have ever done, to create a republic with people from all corners of the world, of all colors, all religions and ethnicities, can come together and all live under the same constitution, now a new constitution, and the rule of law." He says, "No one's ever done this. No one's ever accomplished this in a republic. We have that chance. We have a chance to create," he says, "the composite nation."

• 14:01Speaker 02

  "And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt."

• 14:11Speaker 04

  It's so hopeful. You read it, God, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like a multiculturalism manifesto. But it's rooted in, this is so important to understand about him and other abolitionists too, it's rooted in the belief now that not only had they won the war, but they had recreated a different America. They had reinvented the republic. That it's the second republic now.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  However, like all revolutions, this one will have a counter-revolution.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  In the 1868 presidential, the general election, the first time black men voted in large numbers.

• 14:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the time, some black men were voting, but not consistently, and it definitely wasn't a guaranteed or protected right.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Black men in the South, former slaves, the freedmen themselves lined up in droves at voting polls to vote. And they voted for the conqueror of the Confederacy, Ulysses Grant, and he became president. Now, the Democrats at that time ran a viciously, I mean, very openly racist white supremacist campaign against Grant. That campaign, it must be said, was probably the single most racist and white supremacist campaign ever conducted in American history. They just appealed to white man's society, white man's government, and protecting the country from, you know, the N-word vote.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  And in the wake of the 68 election, even during that election, this counter-revolution by the white South was wrecked upon black Americans. It was wrecked upon the freed people.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  The emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and many other imitators, many other kinds of terrorist groups, vigilante groups across the South, who will wage an informal, largely vigilante terror war against Republican politics, black politics, and the black right to vote, using terror, using violence, using intimidation, and using virulent, you know, white supremacy.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  All the good scholarship about the Klan and all of its imitators shows that the principal aim of Klan violence and others was to stop black politics, to wipe out black suffrage.

• 17:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the midst of all this violence to suppress the black vote, the federal government makes a move to step in. The 15th Amendment, which grants black men the right to vote, was ratified in 1870.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  The revolution wrought in our condition by the 15th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is almost startling, even to me.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I view it with something like amazement. It is truly vast and wonderful. And when we think through what labors, tears, and precious blood it has come, we may well contemplate it with a solemn joy.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Henceforth, we live in a new world, breathe a new atmosphere, have a new earth beneath and a new sky above.

• 18:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  But despite the 15th and the work done to bring equality to the polls, the push to suppress the black vote with violence and intimidation became even stronger during the Jim Crow era that started in the late 1870s. The Jim Crow era would last almost 100 years and would be defined by the violent, systematic oppression of black Americans across the South.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  This was Frederick Douglass's worst nightmare. The country was reverting back to its old ways, and that essential right, the right to vote, was under attack.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Though we have had war, reconstruction, and abolition as a nation, we still linger in the shadow and blight of an extinct institution.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Though the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements. In his downward course, he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  At times, it causes a real despair for him and for others in the former abolitionist movement.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Do you ask me how, after all that has been done, this state of things has been made possible? I will tell you. Our reconstruction measures were radically defective.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  So, yeah, as he grows older, this defeat of reconstruction becomes, in some ways, the most difficult thing in his life to assess, to incorporate into his vision of America. But the thing that sustained him, right or wrong, naive or not, was this faith in natural rights.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  By law, by the Constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the Constitution, the Negro is a man and a citizen and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family residing in the United States.

• 20:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  Frederick Douglass clung to the vote as the ultimate symbol of freedom and equal rights in American democracy. He traveled around the country, speaking to this belief, and asserting that it is the right to vote and the power behind it that has made Black Americans targets of violence.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Basically, he is saying, if we didn't have this right to vote, they probably wouldn't be killing us. It's our politics and our quest for power, both economic and political, that they really want to kill.

• 21:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  Frederick Douglass never gave up on the transformational power of the vote, and continued to fight for universal suffrage until the very end of his life. And that's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit. If you want to hear more on Frederick Douglass, check out the full-length Throughline episode, "The Most Sacred Right." And be sure to join us next week to hear a rarely-known story about the American Confederates, who made the decision to leave the country rather than rejoin the Union.

• 22:15Speaker 06

  Slavery in Brazil was really stable. And at that point, the Brazilian Empire was supporting Europeans and white Americans to come to Brazil.

• 22:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  While Frederick Douglass and the radical Republicans didn't think the changes after the Civil War went far enough, others felt that the US was no longer their home. So they sought to make a new one in Brazil. The story of the Confederados, that's next week. Don't miss it.

• 22:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  This episode was produced by Kiana Moradam and edited by Christina Kim with help from the Throughline production team. Music by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kane, Irene Naguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Minor, and Lindsay McKenna. We're your hosts, Rand Abdelfatah.

• 23:11Speaker 05

  And Ramtin Arablouei. Thank you for listening.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  This message comes from Jerry. Car insurance gives drivers plenty to be skeptical about. Jerry gives them a way to check. Jerry shops rates from over 100 insurers, so drivers can review their options and switch all in the app. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry has saved drivers over $1 billion on car insurance. It has 4.75 stars on the App Store and over 5 million drivers. Still skeptical? There's only one way to find out. Download Jerry today.