Essay 15-B: Frederick Douglass, the Fifteenth Amendment, and Black Male Suffrage

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

Frederick Douglass was born in February of 1818 and later chose the fourteenth of the month as his birthday since it was the last time he saw his mother. From an early age, Douglass recognized the correlation between literacy and freedom. This, alongside his innate intelligence, set him on the task of educating himself. He then met his future wife, Anna Murray, who helped him escape his enslaver and make his way to Bedford, Massachusetts, where he began involving himself in the abolitionist movement. Anti-slavery groups invited Douglass to make speeches in the North and West, and his fame as an orator increased rapidly. Given the power of these speeches, some audiences doubted that Douglass had been a slave. To prove his background, Douglass published The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to silence his critics. To avoid being captured, Douglass spent time abroad in places like England, Ireland, and Scotland. Finally, abolitionists offered to purchase his freedom; he accepted, and he and his family relocated to Rochester, New York. In 1855, Douglass started publishing his own newspaper, The North Star, to advance the abolitionist cause. He was a great advocate for Black suffrage after their service in the Civil War. He pushed for Black citizenship and suffrage to give their consent.

Unlike abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery document, Douglass believed it was the duty of every American to work within the confines of the Constitution and the political process. Douglass believed that slavery in the Constitution was like scaffolding: ugly but temporary. He challenged the country to turn America towards the Constitution’s framing in freedom and natural rights. The Constitution should serve as a beacon to advocate for all people. The Constitution, for Douglass, spoke in an abolitionist tongue, and the nation needed to fulfill this promise. 

Given his abolitionist stance and rhetorical prowess, it is not surprising that Douglass became a leading voice in the anti-slavery movement. He also strongly supported women’s suffrage and equality for all citizens. Douglass was a leading voice in the Reconstruction Amendments, especially the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to Black men. This position, however, put Douglass at odds with leading women suffragettes. For Douglass, there was more at stake than just getting black men the right to vote. It was about showing that Black men were human. Black male suffrage would grant them social recognition and legitimize them as a political force in society. While Douglass had long argued for women’s suffrage, he maintained that Black male suffrage was the greater imperative. Enfranchisement meant that Black men could contribute to society by voting and holding office, and even more, receive the economic benefits of American society. 

Upon emancipation, universal suffrage was the next goal on the reform agenda among abolitionists and women’s rights advocates. The women’s rights movement had long been strongly linked to abolition. To advance this end, the American Equal Rights Association was formed with both Black and women’s rights as their focus. But in Washington, political reform after the Civil War was concentrated on expansions for the newly freed Black people, including Black male suffrage. 

However, leading women’s rights figures, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, began a push for white women’s suffrage over Black suffrage. Her arguments centered on what she viewed as the inferiority of Black voters and their inability to exercise the vote.  Stanton wrote in a fiery editorial that Blacks were not educated enough to exercise the vote. She thought they “do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a republic, [and] never read the Declaration of Independence or Webster’s spelling book.”

At the annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in May 1896, Douglass found himself in a position needing to defend the focus on Black male suffrage rather than women’s suffrage in the debates about the upcoming Fifteenth Amendment. According to Douglass, the nation was not ready to embrace both the Black male and women’s vote. A choice had to be made for one or the other. In making his case for Black male suffrage, Douglass argued that Blacks, unlike women, were being dragged from their homes and lynched, among numerous other atrocities. When members of the meeting pointed out that Black women were also victims of violence, Douglass pointed out that the women were being targeted because of their race, not their gender. 

Douglass was fully aware that the Fifteenth Amendment was not a magical cure for the nation’s racial ills. The Amendment did not protect Blacks from poverty, violence, or disenfranchisement through literacy tests and poll taxes. But it served as a beacon of hope for future generations. According to Douglass, his life’s work had been to see the principles of liberty, humanity, and consent expressed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, fully realized without regard to race, gender, or religion. 

Eric Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science at Berry College in Rome, GA.  He teaches a wide range of courses in American government and political theory.  Dr. Sands is also a professor in Ashland University’s MAHG program. 

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