by Monica A.
"[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence."
Frederick Douglass was not only an outspoken anti-slavery activist but also a huge supporter of equal rights. For a man so well known in history, little is known about his movements to not only gain freedom for his fellow African Americans but also for all people, everywhere. This included women who he could see in his day-to-day life were being neglected by the patriarchy.
Douglass escaped slavery in America and became an influential African American author. His writings ranged from ethical arguments, to science, to culture and so much more. Praised in most of the American school system as simple freed slave who taught himself how to read, Douglass went on to become so much more than that. Though his fights for equality on every civic level his works were referenced by many great leaders in the Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s and even of civil rights arguments today! In my favorite quote, (above) Douglass seemingly effortlessly explains how there is no reason for the sexes to be separate in anything, because they are made of the same everything.
His gusto in his relentless effort for equality followed him to the very day he died, and that is what makes him not only an American hero, a civil rights warrior, but also an honorable feminist in history.
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