In 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton first proposed calling for women to get the vote, it was such a shocking idea that her friend Lucretia told her “you’ll make us ridiculous” and her husband left town. Yet Elizabeth, firm in her convictions, did it anyway. Even among the 300 radical activists gathered at the Seneca Falls convention it sparked an uproar.
But then Frederick Douglass stood up to support it.
Frederick Douglass, reformer, abolitionist, lecturer, and best-selling author of his own autobiography (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave ) was also the only Black person in attendance.* It’s often forgotten among his other achievements as a champion of equality that he so vigorously supported equality for women too. It was with his voice and his eloquent support that the motion passed and the fight for female enfranchisement began.
Much of the press after the convention was mocking—even some women wrote scathing denunciations ("we have all the rights we need”). However, Frederick Douglass went on the record in his newspaper, The North Star, in support of the meeting:
In respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go farther, and express our conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for women. 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 woman 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.”
That Douglass would extend the language of abolition to women’s suffrage was not unusual. Suffs like Lucy Stone and Matilda Joslyn Gage were devoted to abolition as much as women’s rights. They believed that the enslaved were deserving of freedom, liberty and equality, and so were women.
This alliance of abolitionists and suffragists was sustained through the Civil War, but fractured soon after. Arguments about who needed the vote more caused a massive division among those fighting for equal rights at the time—particularly between white women and Black men and women. Even Frederick and Elizabeth had a ferocious public debate. These divisions suited a political establishment who vastly preferred to set white women against Black people rather than have both groups unite against them.
Through all those fights, Frederick Douglass never wavered in his support for the women’s rights movement. On the day he died in 1895, he attended a women’s rights meeting and received a standing ovation.
To me Douglass’s role at Seneca Falls is so important, because so often in the fight for equality in America we see oppressed groups pitted against each other as to whose equality takes precedence in the fight for freedom. The spirit and generosity of Frederick Douglass is a reminder that we all lose when that happens. That to fight for those qualities of freedom, liberty and equality for all does not lessen the rights of any one group to enjoy them. And it is why it is so useful to remember the stories that show the unity of which we can be capable.
* In her book Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All, Martha S. Jones goes into detail about the free Black women living in Seneca Falls who might have been interested in attending the convention. It’s notable that they weren’t there.