A History of Progressivism and Race

In 1865, amid the final throes of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass worried that the prospect of fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence, by finally securing to blacks â??the most perfect civil and political equality,â? would founder on the allure of policies that in crucial respects restricted their natural rights â?? e.g., the rights to acquire property and vote. Such policies, though intended to â??prepare them to better handle freedom,â? would â??practically enslave . . . the Negro, and make . . . the [Emancipation] Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It is the right to choose oneâ??s own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any[one] undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery.â? The right to vote was even more important, because it was the main means for blacks to protect all their other natural rights. â??Without this,â? Douglass stressed, the black man â??is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right.â?