Welcome welcome welcome friends on this wonderful afternoon here on behalf of
your friends and staff of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. I thank
you for joining our Facebook live. Many of you had an opportunity to see some of
our recent Facebook lives which have gone up over the previous days and in
our first one we asked for some kind of dialogue, some ideas from you on things
that you would like to see - what content are you interested in getting
from us? And as a direct result of some of those comments and feedback we got - I
hope many of you have already had a chance to check out the full tour of the
home which was given several days ago on Facebook live - if you haven't go ahead
and check it out it is archived on our Facebook page, again for the Frederick
Douglass National Historic Site. Others of the comments in which we received,
some folks were looking for all sorts of different things, but one of them was
a deep dive into various subjects related to Frederick Douglass and so
that's what this one's is going to be. It's going to be a little bit of a more extended
video, as opposed perhaps what some people are used to here, and there's no
better opportunity for us right now - the day that this is being broadcast it is a
31st of March 2020, and as I hope we are aware through the course of the month of
March this is, of course, Women's History Month and so with this topic in mind our
deep dive that we're going to spend quite a bit of time exploring today is titled, "It
is but simple justice": Frederick Douglass and Women's Rights. He has a
long history with it, so I invite you to join us. Come and go as you need to. This
will be archived so you can revisit later, leave comments. You can feel free
to ask questions. We can address after the live is over and feel free to share
this stream if you feel that there are those who may be interested in hearing
more things about Fredrick Douglass. We are really getting down and deep into some
of these topics and watch in the future as well
after this Facebook live there will be future ones coming in other days that'll
be on various subjects - some shorter, some longer - all sorts of ideas as the
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site continues working through some of the
suggestions, or the ideas, that you shared with us in that initial video. And if you
have no idea what video I'm talking about, feel free to go check out that
original video and leave some of your thoughts
or even leave them into this video - what future topics would you like to see us
explore ,either in significant depth as will be the case for this one or a
little more brief kind of snippets a few minutes here and there? July of 1848
a call was sent out for a women's rights convention to be held in Seneca Falls,
New York. Frederick Douglass is the editor of the North Star newspaper at
this point in time, which is printing in Rochester, New York. He reprints the
announcement and immediately makes plans to attend. His North Star newspaper runs
every edition with the phrase "Right is of no sex." Douglass was the only African
American man to attend saying about the question of women's votes, "it is
but simple justice," that women be able to vote. Douglass is one of 32 men to add
their name to what comes out of this convention called the Declaration of
Sentiments, which says in part, "we hold these truths to be self-evident that all
men and women are created equal." Through the middle of the 19th century
women's rights were closely related to the anti-slavery cause. They are not the
same movement, but there is some crossover there. They are confronting
different questions, however, though from similar lenses, and Douglass noted about
these kind of similar trajectories he said once, "woman, however, like the colored
man will never be taken by her brother and lifted to a position. What she
desires she must fight for." David blight who's a
Pulitzer prize-winning historian of Frederick Douglass and others is going
to describe the questions of women's rights in the middle of the 19th century
as the "lightning rods," highly charged issues that will get strong reactions
from people all across the spectrum of American thought but Douglass reached
out to these lightning rods and he grabbed on to them without any ambiguity,
without any caution. In Frederick Douglass's worldview it seems rights
were rights period. And now from Seneca Falls onward - 1848
onward - Frederick Douglass has now been at this convention , many folks in popular
American consciousness - whatever that means - many folks began to see that the
women's rights movement and the abolition movement, the anti-slavery
movement were one in the same. They were not one in the same but the general
consensus upon many of the time is that they were the same or very, very similar.
You'd see similar folks coming and going from them. One of the key figures of the
Seneca Falls convention held in 1848, there's a woman on this side here,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is her name. For the next several years following this
1848 moment in Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass are
going to work side by side on causes of justice and inclusion in this nation. By
1849, the year after the Seneca Falls convention,
this woman has now entered the picture, Susan B. Anthony, and she is now calling
Rochester, New York home just as Frederick does. So they are living in the
same town as much of these events are going to be unfolding. Many of Susan B.
Anthony's early speeches are condemning slavery and racial prejudice across this
nation which to the eyes of many folks just casually watching or reading in the
newspapers, this is further connecting and blurring these movements into one.
Douglass - a noted anti-slavery speaker, lecturer, profound thinker - is speaking of
women's rights. Folks like Stanton and Anthony, some of the dominant female
leaders in terms of getting attention in headlines, they are also now speaking
against race prejudice further blends the view of these movements through the
1850s. As we march onward, Douglass is attending numerous women's rights events.
We are now seeing increasing numbers of men and women who see the vote as the
answer to so many of the continued debates ongoing in this nation.
The question before so many was never so much what
is the answer to solving these questions of inequities. The question - excuse me - the
question is, how do we solve this? What's the solution? How do you get to that
point in time? It's not what's the answer, it's how do we achieve that answer which
is full suffrage and equality for all people. They're going to journey through the
1850s exploring lots of vibrant history that even in a deep dive like this we
won't spend time fully diving into each and every moment and speech that these
key individuals will give, but as we accelerate into the 1860s, Douglass's
involvement with women's rights will never quite be the same after 1861 when
this great war comes across this nation. The American Civil War started
military-wise in 1861. As Douglass biographer Benjamin Quarles notes, "During
the war the abolitionists and the feminists dropped their distinctive
characters and identified themselves with the mass of citizens pledged to
support the Union." The war is distracting people - perhaps rightfully so. Susan B.
Anthony is going to grumble during this course about Elizabeth Cady Stanton
saying during the war, "It is impossible for her to think or speak on
anything but the war." Progress, the large movements amongst women's rights,
these major gatherings they're starting to sputter as the war gets into phase
and as it continues accelerating, as the casualty rolls are going. Women's rights
is kind of taking a little bit of a side seat for a dominant narrative moving
forward during a wartime, and Douglass too is laser-focused on this war and
especially what he hopes may come out of this great storm when all is said and
done. With the war ending, new questions are now going to arise. Frederick
Douglass remained in the forefront of this newly enlivened battle for equality.
This post-Civil War period put a severe strain
on those who prioritized the rights of black men as opposed to those to whom
the rights of women, especially white women, were paramount. The inescapable
question had now arrived. Now that the war had come and to some
degree had gone, is it more important for black men to have the right to vote for
America's future, or for women to have the right to vote for America's future?
Frederick Douglass had one view. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had
another view. Leading suffragists demanded that the crusade for black male
suffrage include women into the franchise as well. Douglass remained
their old ally and wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton thanking her fer
well launching, "the good ship" Equal Rights Association. It's a new group that
they put up to fight for the rights of everyone, but it was soon to become very
clear this good ship on which Frederick Douglass is speaking of is sailing
directly into a typhoon that's right there in front of all of them. They
pledged mutual support for each other's causes but it was clear this good ship
has a couple different captains on board and each one of these captains it seems
is trying to steer that rudder in a slightly different direction. A few
months after this good ship Equal Rights Association is launched in 1866,
Frederick Douglass is going to warn the Association that they are in danger of
becoming a woman's rights association. They seem to be ignoring the equal
rights aspect of all of society and they seem to be emphasizing women only. Mr.
Douglass now pushes for delayed women's suffrage. He's never saying women
shouldn't vote, he's simply saying it needs to wait a time and part of his
argument for this he's going to say, "with women it is a desirable
matter. With us it is important a question of life and death.
With us disfranchisement means New Orleans,
it means Memphis." And here he is referencing two very recent race-based
violent attacks where the blood had not yet dried that had spilt upon this land.
But from the women's point of view here from some of these prominent female
leaders, Frederick Douglass in making these choices is becoming an unreliable
ally. Prominent female leaders - some of them now - started to look elsewhere for
support for their movement. If it wasn't going to come from Frederick Douglass
and folks like him, notably some will look into the company
a man named George Francis Train. Frederick Douglass is going to warn them
that, "this is the trick of the enemy to assail and endanger the rights
of the black man...such alliances will only lead to trouble in the family."
Douglass is trying to tell these women that they need to wait their turn for
suffrage. These women are clearly telling Douglass now is their turn and if he is
going to be an obstacle even Frederick Douglass is expendable if he's going to
be an obstruction towards the suffrage of women. As their suspicions grew,
Stanton and Anthony wanted to know exactly where Frederick Douglass stood
on this issue. They wrote him asking him to join them in Albany, New York at a
state hearing on women's suffrage. Douglass didn't show up at the
convention. A similar scene played out in Kansas soon afterwards. Women leaders
called upon Douglass to go to Kansas and help them with some women's suffrage
hearings there. Douglass sat these out too. Frederick Douglass like many Republicans
of his time was, at least for now, appearing to abandon the cause of voting
for women in order that black suffrage will be attained. And obviously though
this story is not as simple as black men versus white women .Sojourner Truth is
going to note during some of these back and forths that she's observing she says,
"if colored men get their rights and no
colored women get theirs, there will be a bad time about it." Still she, and others
like Francis Harper, are going to battle for black male suffrage even if it does
not include black women. Black male suffrage and white women's suffrage did
not seem, at least in the eyes of Anthony, Douglass, and Stanton, to be able to
coexist on the same agenda, at the same time. Someone had to wait and Frederick
Douglass was clear: he would not wait; he could not wait. And this is going to lead
to an epic showdown in the coming years that moves into in the words of
historian David Blight , "indefensively racist rhetoric." Stanton, the one closest
to me here, she articulated in one of her defenses for her beliefs here that
men have a history of war, of violence, of conquest, of acquisition, of slavery, of
slaughter. The only thing worse to her than a white man's government was a
man's government, because the only thing a man's government would do is multiply
the amount of tyrants in control of the system. She then railed on how this very
idea of enfranchising black men degrades mothers and wives and daughters by
placing them beneath in her words here, "ditch-diggers, bootblacks, hostlers,
butchers and barbers." She continued asking folks to imagine if they really
want, again her words here, "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung...
making laws for refined, educated anglo-saxon woman reformers." Even
Frederick Douglass is going to drift into language that seems perhaps a little bit
moving in this direction. He's going to be using this phrase periodically
throughout the middle section of his life called, "drunked
Patrick," joking about an out-of-control Irishman who is possessing the ballot
while the black man does not. He uses this evidence as proof that black men
should vote because if a drunk Irishman - this drunken Patrick - can vote then
certainly a black man who was sober would have a higher level of
understanding is Frederick's argument here. Some are very disappointed in the
way Mr. Douglass is going to be utilizing this drunken Patrick imagery to try to
support his cause and move his purposes forward and many, many, many even in the
women's rights movement are repulsed by language that both Stanton and Anthony
are now beginning to choose to start to use in this scenario. Frederick Douglass
could seem amid some of these back and forth conversations and especially
according to modern standards as rather patriarchal. He argued that women
were always advantaged over black men because their husbands, brothers, and
fathers could already vote. Douglass will tell a Rhode Island audience that he
simply loves women too much to say anything negative about them. Black male
suffrage needs more energy according to him because women already have a natural
inside track to suffrage since, "you are beautiful and we are not." Douglass
during some of this tension is going to decline several invitations to go to
women's suffrage events or conventions or put pressure on, and this causes
several meeting organizers to start to label Frederick Douglass as ungenerous
to the cause and to this push of being ungenerous he roars back, "I am impelled
by no lack of generosity. I deliver myself to a cause if not more sacred
certainly more urgent because it is one of life and death to the long enslaved
people of this country while the Negro is mobbed, beaten, shot, stabbed, hanged, and
burnt his claims may be preferred by me without exposing in anywise myself to
the call of narrowness or meanness towards the cause of women."
Douglass insists here that when it comes to generosity it is the women who are
failing to demonstrate that generous spirit. Biographer William McFeely notes
that here, "he spoke with a voice of absolute patriarchal assurance but
patriarchal are not his was a realistic appraisal of the realities." In the words
of William McFeely, as the 15th amendment came into being,
Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony each felt betrayed and in this painful rift
they each believed that it was the other side who was not able to understand the
realities of the moment. Attaining the vote was everything and they disagreed
so much at least in part because they agreed on so much. They agreed on this
one fundamental key detail that attaining the votes for both groups at
the same time at this period in American history was impossible. And because they
agreed on that that creates a rift. That creates a massive problem. If it's
impossible for both of us to get it, who goes first? Neither side could envision
an America in which everyone's voice was heard simultaneously due to the
political realities that they understood. But still amidst this conversation,
amidst what appears this one or the other dichotomy, many Black women
continued to campaign for universal suffrage knowing that discrimination on
account of race or sex are both equally unacceptable. Douglass is going to push
this Equal Rights Association to support the Fifteenth Amendment but his attempt
will fail. At this meeting in 1869, Anthony seen here is going to blow up at
Frederick and force him into an impromptu debate. Ninety percent of the audience
were women. Anthony's going to tell him that women have to stop stepping aside
for the black vote. Men cannot understand us women, she will shout. "They think of us
as some of the slaveholders used to think of their slaves, all love and
compassion with no malice in their hearts," but watch out she warns. Women are
fed up with being dependent and demand to earn their own bread.
Douglass responds to Ms. Anthony in front of this audience, "I do not see how
anyone can pretend there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as
to the Negro. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities.
When they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lampposts, when they are
objects of insult and outrage at every turn, they will have an urgency to obtain
the ballot equal to our own." And the minutes - the notes here - talk of some
scattered applause rising above the crowd as Mr. Douglass finishes his words.
Ms. Anthony immediately shoots back. "Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the
Negro, but with all the outrages that he today suffers he would not exchange his
sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton." Those who recorded notes
for this impromptu debate here described in this meeting laughter and jeering
that busts out at Ms. Anthony's comment here.
Laughter so loud that it all but silenced Frederick as he attempted to
respond. As he tried to answer Susan B. Anthony further drowned him out with the
assertion that the vote for black men but not for women would send fugitive
wives on the loose around this country mocking that idea of the fugitive slave
through American history. She declared, "we are in for a fight today, the most
intelligent first in voting," and therefore "let woman be first, and the
Negro last." The master of oratory had been symbolically knocked down
very publicly at this 1869 moment in time. And at least for now there is no
chance of union in the near future. Stanton and Anthony will now forge a new
group called the National Woman Suffrage Association whose task is to fight
solely for women's suffrage moving forward. Amidst this split however lest
we fall for the narrative that either one of these are just monolithic
movements behind a key individual or two, tremendous diversity amongst the women's
movement, tremendous diversity among movements that many in history look at
Frederick Douglass is leading. Through the women's movement even with Anthony
and Stanton now leaving the Equal Rights Association behind to forge this new
women's group, a rival group for women has emerged under leading reformers such
as Lucy Stone, names that don't make it in our history
book, as well of the American Woman Suffrage Association and this group will
still continue to fight for Black male suffrage. There is no one monolithic
women's rights movement even though Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B
Anthony are probably, through our history books, the most famous names to us out of
that. They're absolutely not the only ones. The women's movement had severed.
Stanton and Anthony - while certainly vocal - continued to fight for their
absolute principles, but they soon would find themselves in growing amounts of
isolation from some other threads of the women's rights movement. Told that women
must wait Susan B. Anthony is going to proclaim, "I will cut off this right arm
of mine before I will ever work for, or demand the vote for the Negro and not
for women." Stanton predicted that this moment would unleash the
"fearful outrages" on womanhood, as a phrase that she's going to use and she's
playing on this stereotyped imagined image of this demon - the Black rapist who
just runs loose throughout the countryside. In regards to Black women Stanton is
going to assert that they simply were better off being enslaved. She says,
"It is better to be the slave of an educated white man than a degraded and
ignorant black one...Now clowns make laws for queens." Douglass addresses this
victimization as well. He certainly does not dismiss female victimization. He
reminds Stanton and Anthony that it's not just white women who are victimized.
Black women are victimized as well, and in continuing this line of thinking he
declares an important distinction that Stanton almost certainly disagreed with.
A Black woman is victimized, Frederick Douglass will say, "not because she
is a woman but because she is black." Following his logic, supported by Francis
Harper and others, race must take the priority over sex when it comes to
inequality. Stanton still demanded women's right to vote regardless of
social context or violence. As historian David Blight writes, "the utter
insecurity of Black communities in the south simply did not interest her."
Douglass is not alone in opposing her words. Francis Harper further notes,
"when it is a question of race I let the lesser question of sex go, but the white
women all go for sex letting race occupy a minor position." In
her study of Black women suffragists Rosalyn Torberg-Penn asserts, "White
women suffragists in particular were imprisoned by the sexist society they
challenged." They simply could not see anything beyond the sexism of the
patriarchy. And for Douglass it seems very likely that he took some of this
stuff very, very personally. On an intimate level for him right
around the same time, his brother Perry has recently escaped significant
race-based violence in Texas and is lucky to be alive.
His son-in-law has been receiving violent threats at work, and after
Frederick Douglass had a confrontation with President Andrew Johnson, his son
and namesake Frederick Douglass Jr. is receiving death threats in the District
of Columbia. These questions for Douglass were life and death for his family and
by disregarding these observations about lynching and other race-based violence
these suffragists were in the words of historian Leigh Fought's "Women in the World of
Frederick Douglass," "suggesting to him that for all their abolitionism they
devalued black lives, including his and those of his family." Douglass heard all
of this language and after decades of radical activism, Douglass had learned
something of an abiding pragmatism. He wanted more out of the 15th Amendment,
absolutely he wanted so much more, but imperfect as it was he recognized while
it didn't go the leap that he wanted, it was still a step forward. It was still
progress, even if incomplete. This is hardly the first time in which Douglass
will accept half measures while still continuing to battle for a longer
revolution. But one has to wonder during this same conversation if Douglass's
pragmatism would have remained the same had the situation been reversed. If we
have a hypothetical 15th Amendment in this nation that enfranchises white
women leaving Black men and Black women to wait generations perhaps, if that's
what he knew was coming, would he still in the name of political reality been as
understanding as he is imploring Stanton, Anthony, and others to be? We'll
never know the answer. We can only speculate on whether he would or would
not have been. During this period it seems that Douglass began to cut some
communication. Susan B. Anthony is going to note at one point that she's "not
heard one lisp from you since you suddenly and mysteriously disappeared at
Albany." immediately after the 15th Amendment is passed Douglass calls for
the 16th Amendment to enfranchise women. Right away he's still engaged in the
women's rights movement, even in light of some of the controversy that had
unfolded and some of the pain. But Douglass's continued presence in the
women's suffrage scene created some awkward moments. One convention there's a
person who described Douglass being, "paraded as an ignorant monster
possessing the ballot while they are denied it." Elizabeth Cady Stanton also
began distributing caricatures of black men showing how far suffrage had fallen
and yet still women wait. She also hit personally on Frederick Douglass
comparing him to a beast. She described him once as being wrapped in, "a
great circular cape of wolf skins, a most formidable and ferocious aspect." Her
dehumanizing vision of Frederick Douglass now caused her to add that when
she saw him, in her words here, "I trembled in my shoes and was almost as
paralyzed as Red Riding Hood in a similar encounter." This stuff could only
have strained Douglass's sense of decency. But still as the years march on,
the 1880s will arise and Douglass continues to be at almost every annual
convention for many of these suffrage associations. Douglass was a visible
presence at these meetings but as historian Leigh Fought explains, "Stanton
and Anthony at worst despised Black men and
at best considered them expendable, all the while using Black women as
rhetorical devices, rather than partners." Douglass supported the cause but there
was little fondness among the individuals. They were useful political
allies, no question about it. Sometimes they were able to maintain a cordial
relationship, but the common narrative that often gets portrayed in history of
friendship between them - that one seems like it might be a little bit of a
stretch given some of the evidence. And evidencing some of the things
happening at the time is the volume series of the History of Woman
Suffrage which is being written and released - that's this one here - the
History of Woman Suffrage is being written and released during the same
period in time in which Frederick Douglass is penning his third
autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. They're being written,
at least the initial ones, at the same time period but they don't tell the same
story. The history of women's suffrage says that they began before abolitionism
but Douglass will write that he joined the women's cause in part because they
were already deeply engaged in the abolition work. Douglass in his third
narrative, The Life and Times, he does not mention Seneca Falls nor that 1848
convention which is what we started with during this talk. The history of women's
suffrage naturally talks about. It's a significant event there and it has
Douglass as a central figure there, which history tells us he was significantly
involved at least in the second day of meetings especially. It's speculated,
given some of the differences we see and how they are all coming the terms with
their own past here it said, "they included him for his international
stature. They also wanted his endorsement in order to gloss over their own
checkered history with black civil rights
and to portray woman's suffrage as the true victim of the unfulfilled promise
of reconstruction." I don't know of a better summation of this moment in
literary history then as written by that historian Leigh Fought from LeMoyne
College there in her book "Women in the World of Frederick Douglass,"
where she writes describing this moment between these
competing histories. He simultaneously, Frederick this is, "he simultaneously
declared himself a woman's rights man while erasing his role in its origin
story or subsequent history. He skirted around any grievances emerging from
disagreements in the 1860s or the white woman's suffragists depiction of
freedmen by ignoring the entire episode. He neither publicly disputed their
version of events nor resorted to promulgating stereotypes about woman's
intelligence or place in society in the same way that they did about African
Americans. He was in these respects a better woman's rights man than they were
civil rights women." As he enters his final decade, Frederick Douglass is
present at the 1888 gathering which is commemorating the 40th anniversary of
the Seneca Falls convention. As he addresses this 40th anniversary
speech here, he doesn't so much talk about the past and what happened he
seems to be looking and is aiming and is targeted on the future. This man of
millions of words is going to challenge men especially on their role in women's
rights moving forward. He will say, "If men come here at all they should take back
benches and wrap themselves in silence. I believe no man however gifted with
thought and speech can voice the wrongs and present the demands of women with
the skill and effect with the power and authority of woman herself. She is her
own best representative. The thing for men to do in the premises
is just to get out of her way and give her the fullest opportunity to exercise
all the powers inherent in her individual personality and allow her to
do it as she herself shall elect to exercise them." He closed saying, "There are
few facts in my humble history to which I look back with more satisfaction than
to the fact recorded by you in the history of the women's suffrage movement
that I was sufficiently enlightened at an early day and when only a few years
from slavery to support your resolution for woman's suffrage." Did you catch what
he just did there? Did you catch the very intentional wording there? The way he
phrased it - recorded in the history of the woman's suffrage movement. He tells
them that he was there based on how they remember things. He wrote about it at the
time in his newspaper and in other places. He did not write about it in his
autobiography or his official words there but now in front of this audience,
40 years later in front of this women's rights audience, he now celebrates his
involvement, as they recorded it in the history of the women's suffrage movement.
It's subtle, but there's meaning there. To the public, Douglass, Anthony, and
Stanton appear to be back on the same page together. After all they're at
events and things, they're standing side by side with one another. They're
praising these same moments but behind the scenes, as it's probably not a
surprise given some of the language and things that have unfurled over these
past years, there's a lot of tension that's still lingering. In correspondence
going on between Stanton and Anthony and this here
Stanton seen seated Susan B. Anthony seen standing there. Anthony demands
that Frederick Douglass not be invited to an 1886 women's rights convention.
His presence she states will infuriate people. Stanton - again the one who is
seated - will withdraw from this convention because she has some health
issues and she can't make the trip, but she sends Frederick Douglass a letter
noting Anthony's request. Frederick and Helen Douglass will defy Anthony and sit
in the front row of this women's rights convention forcing Susan B. Anthony to
either publicly accept their presence at this meeting or make a major scene in
removing them that is unquestionably going to draw a lot of unpleasant
attention to an issue that almost certainly Susan B. Anthony is trying to
keep on the down-low. She's trying to keep some of this past history quiet. A
little bit of the old Douglass still knows - still knew - how to force moments in
history. Anthony will again ask him to skip the 1894 Atlanta convention and
this time at least it seems he didn't show, though age and travel may have had
a bigger factor in things than a particular change of heart or method of
Frederick Douglass. He's roughly around 76 at this point in time, so things are
slowing down for him and although he doesn't go he's not able to here, Ida B.
Wells is going to reflect on some of Susan B. Anthony's behavior through 1894 and others
saying, "although Anthony may have made gains for woman suffrage by her
behavior, she had also confirmed white women in
their attitude of segregation." Almost all reform movements have battles between
the big personalities, and there is no denying Frederick Douglass is a big
personality. There's no denying Elizabeth Cady
Stanton is a big personality. There's no denying Susan B. Anthony is a
big personality. And after so many decades of battling, after so much
struggle so much heartbreak and both literal and metaphorical
loss they had been through so much that many of these reformers going
after all these decades on this is something like a survivor's club. From
the trauma that they have been through, different yet unifying in the resistance,
very few others would be able to understand what any of them had truly
been through over this now nearly 50 years or plus in some occasions of
resistance to American injustice. And although they still were not all in
universal agreements with each other on paths forward, perhaps we can imagine as
we increase in these years with Frederick Douglass and others there's
sometimes a natural human desire for reconciliation. Reconciliation does not,
in this context, necessarily mean that all was forgiven nor that may became
best friends and they emerged together happy one with another.
They were forged in combat, forged in combat against injustice and every last
one of them - and many others not pictured here - every last one of them carried deep,
profound, and painful wounds from that decades-long battle and some of those
painful wounds inflicted by each other. But what Frederick Douglass understood
in the end was the struggle. One of those famous lines of his you see often on
Instagram and other things, "without struggle there can be no progress." Reform
is messy. That's just the nature of what radical reform is and as we're wrapping
up here, even Mr. Douglass's final day is useful in kind of bringing this saga
full circle for us on Frederick Douglass and woman's rights. On the 20th of
February 1895 he spent hours with the National Council of women in Washington,
DC. Despite decades of tension and hostility, he was warmly
welcomed to this audience. When he entered the hall. Mary Wright Sewall
interrupted the meeting and the women present rose in applause as Susan B.
Anthony and Anna Shaw came down and escorted him up onto the platform. As he
sat down on the platform next to Susan B. Anthony he was receiving what
unbeknownst to him or others around him was to be his final ovation. Returning
home later that evening Mr. Douglass was recounting for his wife Helen the events
of the day, perhaps reenacting some of the speeches that he had heard when he
collapsed in the entryway of his home and slowly passed away in the coming
minutes. The very last hours of this titans life were once again locked onto
woman's rights. That's where he spent his final day. Rebecca Traister who's the
author of "Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger" observed in an
interview once, "what is moving to me is that literally to his dying day he
never stopped fighting for full enfranchisement for everyone." After his
death, Susan B. Anthony will visit his now widow and spend the following day with
Helen at Cedar Hill his home here in Washington DC. A few days later, Susan B.
Anthony is one who's going to offer a eulogy for him and remembrances after
death can sometimes soften one's perhaps true feelings in the moment in ways they
remember an individual through some of these eulogies. Douglass is now being
portrayed by Anthony and some others as one of these great heroes of humanity
for whom she happily called a friend and was blessed to work with for nearly five
decades. Douglass's involvement with women's rights didn't even get to end in
his death courtesy of statements made by Anthony afterwards around things
memorializing him, events of his funeral. One of Anthony's lieutenants whose name
is Carrie Chapman Catt ,she's going to announce, "the relationship of
our leaders to the colored question at the Douglass funeral has completely
taken the wind out of our sails. They were suspicious of us all along but
now they know we are just abolitionists in disguise." Historians differ exactly as
to how much animosity remained between Douglass and Anthony especially. Evidence
points to the suggestion that Douglass never really forgave her fully, even
though he was willing to continue partnering with her towards larger goals
of justice, and some of this is evidenced to us on these very days if you are able
to visit the Frederick Douglass Home here in Washington DC. You step inside
that Douglass home on a future date and to this very day you will still find
portraits of both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton hanging in places
of honor in his home with no signs, no hints of some of those painful moments,
those deeply painful moments that we described earlier going through the
1860s - 1870s. Perhaps Frederick Douglass said it best in 1888 and I will close
with his words here. He said, "when I ran away from slavery, it was for myself. When
I advocated emancipation, it was for my people, but when I stood up for the
rights of women, self was out of the question and I found a little nobility
in the act." Thank you for joining us on this day and in this time feel free
share this stream, add comments. We'll be happy to engage in questions even if
you're not watching us live. This thread will remain current, the video will still
be viewable at any point in time, so we won't be taking questions live here but
if you have things we can continue this dialogue offline in the comments section.
Thank you for joining us and we hope to be back on your screens again soon from
your friends at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.
Thank you!