One Hundred Years, One Argument:
Frederick Douglass' and Martin Luther King's
Racial equality has been a plaguing issue in American society throughout the nation’s short history, where the white majority dominated the lives and culture of the black minority. However, numerous movements during this time period argued for a dramatic transformation in the social landscape of the nation. The first of these pushes for change to truly garner national attention was that of the abolitionists immediately preceding the Civil War. Almost one hundred years later, the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-Twentieth Century grabbed the attention of Americans as racial issues re-emerged on the national stage.
The Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements provided a platform for minority leaders to step onto the national stage and support their cause for racial equality. Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King were individuals who took that powerful step into the spotlight during their respective movements in order to influence the public domain and subsequently the laws of the country. Both men were great orators who in their speeches, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and “I Have a Dream,” naturally made many of the same fundamental arguments in support of eliminating racial injustices. They were leaders constrained by their time, but created agendas that were pragmatic nevertheless. However, it was the entire century of time that had passed from the Civil War era to the Civil Rights era which causes the schism involving Douglass and King. There were substantial formal education differences between them, which along with their particular eras, allowed their rhetoric to be a combination of grandiose ideals and ways of advancing their similar, yet independent causes for their people in their day and age.
During the late 1840s, for the first time in America’s short history a racial issue emerged on the national agenda as concerns about slavery grew. Abolitionists worked to end the institution of slavery by stationing in the northern region of America, an area much more susceptible to the change for which they advocated. Although many abolitionists were white, African American Frederick Douglass became one of the premier leaders during the movement.
As a “city slave” in Baltimore, Maryland, Douglass was taught the alphabet and how to “spell words of three or four letters” by the wife of his owner (38). Teaching a slave how to read was against the law, and thus, when his master discovered his progress, Douglass was forced to stop formal lessons because learning “would forever unfit him to be a slave” (37). However, it was this forbiddance which drove Douglass to continue to educate himself on his own, writing in his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, that, “the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn” (38). At this point, Douglass began to self-educate, teaching himself how to read and write in the seven years he was a slave in Baltimore by resorting to “various stratagems” (40).
After escaping to Massachusetts, Douglass became actively involved in abolitionist efforts and was encouraged to give speeches. He then devoted his life to the abolitionist cause, assuming the “narrative identity” of slaves (331). Although Douglass lacked a formal education, he conducted a hefty amount of research to craft unique rhetoric, where he would use a jeremiad format in order to further his cause. He often incorporated religious teachings used by all abolitionists, but at certain times he would utilize a legal argument to invoke the principles on which the United States was founded. Such was the case in his speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” where Douglass focuses on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to argue that slavery was never intended to be a legal institution.
Douglass first emphasizes the Declaration of Independence as he thought the founding fathers intended it. He asserts that with the signers of the Declaration, “nothing was ‘settled’ that was not right,” and that, “justice, liberty and humanity were ‘final;’ not slavery and oppression” (494). With these statements, Douglass showed how the founding fathers also believed that slavery was an unjustified establishment, giving himself a solid foundation with which to work.
Douglass then uses the Constitution to argue that enslavement is not protected under the laws of the nation. According to Leslie Friedman Goldstein in her article, “Morality & Prudence in the Statesmanship of Frederick Douglass: Radical as Reformer,” Douglass interpreted the Constitution as a “glorious liberty document,” claiming that “there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of [slavery]” (608, 505). By doing so, he places, according to scholar Andrea Deacon in her article “Navigating ‘The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake’: Re-Assessing Frederick Douglass, The Orator,” a certain level of “political and social accountability” on the people of the nation to eliminate slavery and social injustices (70). Douglass believed that they could accomplish this goal because he understood and had faith in the “emancipatory potential of the Constitution” (70).
After the Civil War, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution were ratified, legally abolishing slavery, granting citizenry to slaves, and giving African Americans the right to vote respectively. However, nearly one hundred years after the Abolitionist Movement took to the national stage, the Civil Rights Movement emerged with the purpose of ending segregation and granting full equality to minorities. Such an endeavor was necessary despite the three post-Civil War constitutional amendments because Jim Crow laws and deep-rooted prejudices were still an overbearing force in southern culture.
Many civil rights leaders during this era were African American and located throughout the nation, and Martin Luther King emerged as the most prominent and unifying, largely due to his extensive educational background. Although he never graduated from high school, since he skipped both his freshman and senior years, King entered Morehouse College, a historically black school located in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of fifteen (Ching 18). He would graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. Three years later King graduated from a theological seminary in Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. He then moved on to complete his doctoral studies at Boston University, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy in 1955. Barriers like Jim Crow laws disadvantaged African Americans, but they were less restrictive than their slavery equivalents during Douglass’ time because of the post-Civil War amendments, thus King was able to receive such an extensive formal education.
King utilized his understanding of the world and his faith to craft arguments against the wrongdoings of segregation. Before a crowd of 250,000, including 50,000 whites, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, calling for racial equality and an end to discrimination. He references several fundamental features of the nation, including the Declaration of Independence, but his main points come from a close examination of American history and society.
In one of the first points he makes, King alludes to Abraham Lincoln and how the Emancipation Proclamation was a “momentous decree” which gave “hope to millions of Negro slaves” in the wake of injustice (1). But, King acknowledges that this hope has waned as “the Negro still is not free” because their lives are “still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (1). Here, he refers to the emergence of southern Jim Crow laws in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment.
At the same time, King calls on the Declaration of Independence to support his claim that racial wrongdoings need to end, saying that the architects of the country signed a “promissory note” which was meant to encompass all Americans and be the antithesis of racial injustices (1). “This note,” he says, “was a promise” that all men, black and white, “would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’” (1). King asserts that the time for change is now and the urgency of the situation requires that blacks and whites come together to fulfill the promises of the founding fathers.
As a result of King’s rhetorical efforts, laws that led to full equality for African Americans were passed by Congress, appearing as the equivalent of the three constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War. The first bill, implemented directly as a response to the “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington, was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in public places and provided legal protection in terms of equal opportunity in the workplace. The second piece of legislation was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed prejudiced voting practices that led to the disenfranchisement of African Americans, such as the poll tax, literacy tests, and character vouchers. However, the last of the three major laws that led to equality was passed posthumously as King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. After seven days of extreme violence, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was approved to bar discrimination in housing, and effectively create full equality under the law.
But the true testament of King’s oratory comes when compared with Douglass’. Both men were African American civil rights leaders, so naturally they were fighting for a similar cause, Douglass for freedom, and King for equality, but their goals were inherently different because of the time that passed between their respective eras. However, the time factor is where Douglass and King truly begin to split, insofar as to say that the former addressed a nation divided by region, the South and the North, and that the latter faced a nation divided by race.
Additionally, the orators differed in the methods they envisioned as the best way of accomplishing their goals. Douglass called for violent action by referencing the founding father’s plight as an English colony, claiming that they “preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage” (494). He is saying that slaves should draw on this principle and work together to fight for their freedom. King was very much the polar opposite to Douglass, that is to say he advocated for civil disobedience in contrast to violent protest. King pleads his audience to “forever conduct [their] struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline…[to] not allow…creative protest to degenerate into physical violence” (2). According to Keith D. Miller in his article, “Composing Martin Luther King, Jr.,” King’s adherence to Gandhi and nonviolence caused him to firmly believe that any aggression on the parts of African Americans could only hurt their cause (72).
Although they differed in their approaches to achieving their goals, both Douglass and King placed themselves into their arguments by separating from the country. Because of the amount of discrimination Douglass faced, he attacked the Fourth of July as a celebration he could not take part in, repeatedly using the word “your” to refer to the rest of the nation, and exclaiming that “the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me…this Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine” (496). The “yours” here is meant to encompass the white population, while the “mine” is intended to refer to the black community. Similarly, King uses the word “we” to refer to the African American population, and “America” to mean the white community when he says, “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now” (1). However, he moves away from Douglass by eventually ceasing to use both “we” and “America” to refer to a divided nation. In their places, he utilizes only a “we” that encompass all citizens of the United States as a single unified people (4).
The most noticeable difference between Douglass and King was in their view on the role of religion. In “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass accuses the church for making itself the “bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters” (501). Being the religious man that he was, Douglass personally observed the misgivings of the church. He concluded that it turned a blind eye towards racial transgressions, claiming it “is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slaves, it actually takes sides with the oppressors” (501). He contends that the church “divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves,” supporting the haves (the rich tyrant) and pushing the have-nots (the slave) to the side (502). Nevertheless, according to historian Wolfgang Mieder, Douglass often “relied heavily on biblical proverbs to strengthen social and moral statements,” doing so where he exclaims that the church should observe “the language of Isaiah” and “‘cease to do evil, learn to do well…[and] relieve the oppressed’” because it needs to stop upholding an institution which defies everything it teaches (331, 502).
However, one hundred years later, the church was a fundamental part of the grass-roots movement for civil rights, especially the black church, which helped to create a solid structure for a unified national network. King was a reverend himself and many of his tactics revolved around the church. For example, he was one of the founders of the SCLC, or Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which formed to help coordinate nonviolent protests and boycotts. In his speech, King naturally preached to his audience. According to Miller, King “merges his voice with…those of Isaiah and Jesus” when he declares, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together’” (78, 3). Although Douglass used similar tactics when he referenced Isaiah, at the end of “I Have a Dream,” King claims that with “faith,” the nation “will be able to transform the jangling discords…into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood” (3). To the contrary of his predecessor, King utilized religion as the unifying entity in his fight to end segregation and achieve full equality.
Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King used oratory to support their individual causes and end racial injustices inflicted by the white majority on the black minority. Despite being separated by a century of time and having such a significant disparity in their educational background, both men were able to create different, yet fundamentally similar arguments. They each utilized the Declaration of Independence, drew on sources such as the Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation, and manipulated religion, in order to fight against the institutions of slavery and racial segregation. As a result of their rhetoric, Douglass and King helped to achieve the goals of their respective movements and change the laws of the country so that the disadvantaged African American community could have the opportunities promised to them by the principles of the nation.
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