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Jacob Mchangama, FIRE Senior Fellow and author of “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media,” discusses the role free speech played in the fight to end American slavery.
In the years since the adoption of the US Bill of Rights, the question of what to do with American slavery had reached a frustrating stalemate. The escalating conflict between abolitionists and pro-slavery factions often resulted in the suppression of free speech and press.
This was the world that Frederick Douglass sought to reshape with his devotion to the principles of free speech, which is most clearly articulated in his 1860 address “A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston,” where he said “There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.”
For Douglass and many other abolitionists, free speech was the most effective weapon in their crusade to end slavery, and it would become the foundation of the abolitionist movement’s success.
#freespeech #frederickdouglass #ushistory #slavery
Негізгі бет Free speech is a weapon for the oppressed
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