This Decision Has Humbled the Nation: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on October 22, 1883
THIS DECISION HAS HUMBLED THE NATION: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 22 OCTOBER 1883
(Washington, D.C., 1883),
4-14. Other texts in Washington , 22 October 1883;
(Philadelphia, 1896), 50-54; Speech File, reel 20, frames 296-305, FD Papers, DIJC;
Foner, , 4: 392-403.
The 15 October 1883 decision of the United States Supreme Court declaring
the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void sparked loud protest from Afro-
Americans. One of the largest of the meetings to denounce the decision took
place on 22 October in Washington, D.C., at Lincoln Hall. “There was no
standing room—there was scarcely even breathing room,” the Washington
asserted. More than two thousand people, white as well
as black, crowded into the hall while an equal number was turned away. James
M. Gregory of Howard University presided and the Reverend Francis J.
Grimké opened the meeting with a prayer. After Gregory stated the object of
the meeting, Douglass’s son Lewis read eight resolutions, unanimously
adopted by the meeting, calling for state civil rights laws, equal treatment of
black citizens, and enforcement of civil rights laws by the Republican and
Democratic parties. Gregory then introduced Douglass whom the crowd
“lustily applauded,” reported the Washington . The popular
lecturer Robert Green Ingersoll followed Douglass with the longest address of
the evening. When Ingersoll finished, Douglass led three cheers for his
speech which had been frequently interrupted by applause. Brief remarks by
former congressman Samuel Shellabarger and the Reverend Jeremiah E.
Rankin concluded the meeting. Reactions to the speeches of Douglass and
Ingersoll were mixed. The Washington felt both speeches represented
“Noise About Nothing” since the Supreme Court decision would “make no
change in the condition of the black race or in their treatment by the whites.”
A member of the audience, Henry Johnson, expressed a clearer sense of the
majority view when he wrote Douglass on 23 October, praising “the most
admirable, clean [c1ear?] cut and sound doctrine” advanced in his speech.
Henry Johnson to Douglass, 23 October 1883, General Correspondence File,
reel 3, frame 793, FD Papers, DLC; Cleveland , 20, 27 October, 10
November 1883; Washington , 21, 24 October 1883; Washington , 23 October 1883; Washington , 27 October
1883.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I have only a very few words to say to you
this evening, and in order that those few words shall be well-chosen, and
not liable to be misunderstood, distorted, or misrepresented, 1 have been at
the pains of writing them out in full. It may be, after all, that the hour calls
more loudly for silence than for speech. Later on in this discussion, when
we shall have the full text of the recent decision of the Supreme Court
before us,1On 15 October 1883, the United States Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. This law, generally regarded as one of the most radical to emerge from the Reconstruction era, instructed the nation that all persons, regardless of race or color, were entitled to full and equal access to public accommodations and facilities, particularly places of lodging, amusement, and transportation. By an eight to one vote, the Supreme Court struck down the law which had been intended to ensure the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion written by Justice Joseph P. Bradley declared the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional because it compromised the power of state governments in a manner the Constitution did not authorize. Bradley maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment had not given Congress the right to compel states to regulate against private acts of racial discrimination but only to legislate to correct state actions that denied civil rights. Moreover, Bradley maintained, the Thirteenth Amendment granted Congress the power to enact laws necessary to destroy slavery and its "badge." Unequal access to public facilities, he concluded. neither perpetuated the institutions of slavery nor symbolized it and therefore was a matter for state not federal jurisdiction. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 8-26; Lois B. Moreland, (Columbus, Ohio, 1970), 64-78; Loren P. Beth, (New York, 1971), 192-96; Herman Belz, (New York, 1978), 134-36. and the dissenting opinion of Judge Harlan,2John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, and educated at Centre College at Danville and the Transylvania University at Lexington. Although a slaveholder, Harlan joined the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. A lawyer since 1853, he served as Kentucky's attomey general from 1863 to 1867. Harlan unsuccessfully sought the Kentucky governorship on the Republican ticket in 1871 and 1875 but regained political influence by campaigning strenuously for Rutherford B. Hayes's election as president. Hayes rewarded that support by appointing Harlan an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court in 1877. Known as “the great dissenter," Harlan wrote 316 dissenting opinions out of a total of 703 opinions during his thirty-three-year career on the highest court. In opposing the majority decision on the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Harlan claimed that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments intended to protect the civil rights of former slaves from racial discrimination. Congress therefore had a right, Harlan concluded, to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, “by appropriate legislation, which may be of direct and primary character," as was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. According to Harlan, this civil rights legislation was within constitutional bounds when it allowed Congress to regulate the actions of states as well as individuals and corporations that exercise public functions in order to insure equal access of members of various races to public accommodations and facilities. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 26-62; Floyd Barzilia Clark, (Baltimore, 1915); Beth, , 195-96; Moreland, , 64-78; Louis Filler, “John M. Harlan," in , eds., Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, 5 vols. (New York, 1969-78), 2: 1281-95; , 34: 296-72. who must have
weighty reasons for separating from all his associates, and incurring
thereby, as he must, an amount of criticism from which even the bravest
man might shrink, we may be in better frame of mind, better supplied with
facts, and better prepared to speak calmly, correctly, and wisely, than now.
The temptation at this time is, of course, to speak more from feeling than
reason, more from impulse than reflection.
We have been, as a class, grievously wounded, wounded in the house
of our friends, and this wound is too deep and too painful for ordinary and
measured speech.
“When a deed is done for Freedom,
Through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic,
Trembling on from east to west.”3Douglass quotes the first two lines from the poem “The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell. , 10 vols., Riverside ed. (Boston, 1892), 7: 178.
But when a deed is done for slavery, caste and oppression, and a blow is
struck at human progress, whether so intended or not, the heart of human-
ity sickens in sorrow and writhes in pain. It makes us feel as if some one
were stamping upon the graves of our mothers, or desecrating our sacred
temples of worship. Only base men and oppressors can rejoice in a triumph
of injustice over the weak and defenceless, for weakness ought itself to
protect from assaults of pride, prejudice and power.
The cause which has brought us here to-night is neither common nor
trivial. Few events in our national history have surpassed it in magnitude,
importance and significance. It has swept over the land like a moral
cyclone, leaving moral desolation in its track.
We feel it, as we felt the furious attempt, years ago, to force the
accursed system of slavery upon the soil of Kansas, the enactment of the
Fugitive Slave Bill, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,4Douglass alludes to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. the Dred
Scott decision. I look upon it as one more shocking development of that
moral weakness in high places which has attended the conflict between the
spirit of liberty and the spirit of slavery from the beginning, and I venture to
predict that it will be so regarded by after-coming generations.
Far down the ages, when men shall wish to inform themselves as to the
real state of liberty, law, religion and civilization in the United States at this
juncture of our history, they will overhaul the proceedings of the Supreme
Court, and read the decision declaring the Civil Rights Bill unconstitu-
tional and void.
From this they will learn more than from many volumes, how far we
have advanced, in this year of grace, from barbarism toward civilization.
Fellow-citizens: Among the great evils which now stalk abroad in our
land, the one, I think, which most threatens to undermine and destroy the
foundations of our free institutions, is the great and apparently increasing
want of respect entertained for those to whom are committed the responsi-
bility and the duty of administering our government. On this point, I think
all good men must agree, and against this evil I trust you feel, and we all
feel, the deepest repugnance, and that we will, neither here nor elsewhere,
give it the least breath of sympathy or encouragement. We should never
forget, that, whatever may be the incidental mistakes or misconduct. of
rulers, government is better than anarchy, and patient reform is better than
violent revolution.
But while I would increase this feeling, and give it the emphasis of a
voice from heaven, it must not be allowed to interfere with free speech,
honest expression, and fair criticism. To give up this would be to give up
liberty, to give up progress, and to consign the nation to moral stagnation,
putrefaction, and death.
In the matter of respect for dignitaries, it should never be forgotten,
however, that duties are reciprocal, and while the people should frown
down every manifestation of levity and contempt for those in power, it is
the duty of the possessors of power so to use it as to deserve and to insure
respect and reverence.
To come a little nearer to the case now before us. The Supreme Court of
the United States, in the exercise of its high and vast constitutional power,
has suddenly and unexpectedly decided that the law intended to secure to
colored people the civil rights guaranteed to them by the following provi-
sion of the Constitution of the United States, is unconstitutional and void.
Here it is:
“No State,” says the 14th Amendment, “shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life. liberty, or
property without due process of law; nor deny any person within its juris-
diction the equal protection of the laws.”5Douglass makes only a few minor errors in quoting the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Now, when a bill has been discussed for weeks and months, and even
years, in the press and on the platform, in Congress and out of Congress;
when it has been calmly debated by the clearest heads, and the most skillful
and learned lawyers in the land; when every argument against it has been
over and over again carefully considered and fairly answered; when its
constitutionality has been especially discussed, pro and con; when it has
passed the United States House of Representatives, and has been solemnly
enacted by the United States Senate, perhaps the most imposing legislative
body in the world; when such a bill has been submitted to the Cabinet of the
Nation, composed of the ablest men in the land; when it has passed under
the scrutinizing eye of the Attorney-General of the United States; when the
Executive of the Nation has given to it his name and formal approval; when
it has taken its place upon the statute-book, and has remained there for
nearly a decade, and the country has largely assented to it, you will agree
with me that the reasons for declaring such a law unconstitutional and void,
should be strong, irresistible and absolutely conclusive.
Inasmuch as the law in question is a law in favor of liberty and justice,
it ought to have had the benefit of any doubt which could arise as to its strict
constitutionality. This, I believe, will be the view taken of it, not only by
laymen like myself, but by eminent lawyers as well.
All men who have given any thought to the machinery, the structure,
and practical operation of our Government, must have recognized the
importance of absolute harmony between its various departments of
powers and duties. They must have seen clearly the mischievous tendency
and danger to the body politic of any antagonisms between its various
branches. To feel the force of this thought, we have only to remember the
administration of President Johnson, and the conflict which then took place
between the National Executive and the National Congress, when the will
of the people was again and again met by the Executive veto,6During his tenure as president, Andrew Johnson vetoed a number of bills involving Reconstruction and the southern freedmen. Prominent among Johnson's vetoes were those of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (1866), the Civil Rights Bill (1866), the First Reconstruction Bill (1867), the Tenure of Office Bill (1867), the Second Reconstruction Bill (1867), and bills Charles Sumner sponsored, which authorized the admission of new states into the union only if they permitted black suffrage (1866). Eric L. McKitrick, (Chicago, 1960), 108-09; W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] DuBois, (1935; New York, 1962), 331-39. and when the
country seemed upon the verge of another revolution. No patriot, however
bold, can wish for his country a repetition of those gloomy days.
Now let me say here, before I go on a step further in this discussion, if
any man has come here to-night with his breast heaving with passion, his
heart flooded with acrimony, wishing and expecting to hear violent denun-
ciation of the Supreme Court, on account of this decision, he has mistaken
the object of this meeting, and the character of the men by whom it is
called.
We neither come to bury Caesar, nor to praise him.7A close paraphrase of , act 3, sc. 2, line 82. The Supreme Court
is the autocratic point in our National Government. No monarch in Europe
has a power more absolute over the laws, lives, and liberties of his people,
than that Court has over our laws, lives, and liberties. Its Judges live, and
ought to live, an eagle’s flight beyond the reach of fear or favor, praise or
blame, profit or loss. No vulgar prejudice should touch the members of that
Court, anywhere. Their decisions should come down to us like the calm,
clear light of Infinite justice. We should be able to think of them and to
speak of them with profoundest respect for their wisdom, and deepest
reverence for their virtue; for what His Holiness, the Pope, is to the Roman
Catholic Church, the Supreme Court is to the American State. Its members
are men, to be sure, and may not claim infallibility, like the Pope,8The dogmatic constitution of the Roman Catholic Church, , ratified on 18 July 1870 by the first Vatican Council, affirmed that the Pope was infallible, that is, immune from error through divine assistance. More specifically, this constitution maintained that when the Bishop of Rome, as spiritual head of the Universal Church, came to a decision regarding questions of faith and morals with the intent to define a doctrine applicable to all Christians, such decrees were divinely guaranteed as inerrant. Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed.,, 12 vols. (New York, 1908-12), 5: 489-90; Vergilius Ferm, ed., (New York, 1945), 369, 598. but they
are the Supreme power of the Nation, and their decisions are law.
What will be said here to-night, will be spoken, I trust, more in sorrow
than in anger, more in a tone of regret than of bitterness.
We cannot, however, overlook the fact that though not so intended, this
decision has inflicted a heavy calamity upon seven millions of the people of
this country, and left them naked and defenceless against the action of a
malignant, vulgar, and pitiless prejudice.
It presents the United States before the world as a Nation utterly
destitute of power to protect the rights of its own citizens upon its own soil.
It can claim service and allegiance, loyalty and life, of them, but it
cannot protect them against the most palpable violation of the rights of
human nature, rights to secure which, governments are established. It can
tax their bread and tax their blood, but has no protecting power for their
persons. Its National power extends only to the District of Columbia, and
the Territories—where the people have no votes—and where the land has
no people.9Douglass alludes to Justice Joseph Bradley's interpretation of the Constitution regarding the right of state governments to provide their own legislative protection for their citizens' civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, Bradley concluded, because it compromised this right in favor of federal intervention. The Constitution, Bradley asserted, “does not authorize Congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights." Douglass, therefore, broadly interprets Bradley's statement to suggest that federal intervention for civil rights is only allowable in those areas of the country not yet designated as states. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 8-26; John R. Schmidhauser, (Chapel Hill, 1958), 98- 100; Moreland, , 64 68. All else is subject to the States. In the name of common sense, I
ask, what right have we to call ourselves a Nation, in view of this decision,
and this utter destitution of power?
In humiliating the colored people of this country, this decision has
humbled the Nation. It gives to a South Carolina, or a Mississippi, Rail-
Road Conductor, more power than it gives to the National Government. He
may order the wife of the Chief Justice of the United States into a smoking-
car, full of hirsute men and compel her to go and listen to the coarse jests of
a vulgar crowd. It gives to a hotel-keeper who may, from a prejudice born
of the rebellion, wish to turn her out at midnight into the darkness and the
storm, power to compel her to go. In such a case, according to this decision
of the Supreme Court, the National Government has no right to interfere.
She must take her claim for protection and redress, not to the Nation, but to
the State, and when the State, as I understand it, declares there is upon its
Statute book, no law for her protection, the function and power of the
National Government is exhausted, and she is utterly without redress.
Bad, therefore, as our case is under this decision, the evil principle
affirmed by the court is not wholly confined to or spent upon persons of
color. The wife of Chief Justice Waite10Morrison Remick Waite (1816-88) served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1874 to his death. Born in Lyme, Connecticut, Waite graduated from Yale College in 1837, studied law at the office of Samuel M. Young in Maumee City, Ohio, and passed the bar in 1839. The following year, Waite married his second cousin, Amelia Champlin Warner of Lyme, and became Young's law partner. He played an active role in first the Whig and then the Republican parties in Ohio but his only successes in reaching public office were one-year terms in the state legislature (1849) and on the Toledo town council (1851). His display of legal skills as an American counsel in the Alabama claims arbitration between the United States and Great Britain (1871) and as president of the Ohio constitutional convention (1873) prompted Grant to select Waite as Chief Justice. During the fourteen years Waite held this position, he delivered the Court's decision on more than a thousand cases. In cases dealing with Reconstruction-era legislation, Waite took an active, and consistently conservative, role in formulating decisions that curtailed the authority of the federal government to protect the civil rights of the freedmen. C. Peter Magrath, (New York, 1963); Schmidhauser, , 97-114; Moreland, , 44-49; Louis Filler, “Morrison R. Waite," in , 2: 1243-57; , 10: 322-25.—I speak it respectfully—is protected
to-day, not by law, but solely by the accident of her color. So far as
the law of the land is concerned, she is in the same condition as that of the
humblest colored woman in the Republic. The difference between colored
and white, here, is, that the one, by reason of color, needs legal protection,
and the other, by reason of color, does not need protection. It is neverthe-
less true, that manhood is insulted, in both cases. No man can put a chain
about the ankle of his fellow man, without at last finding the other end of it
fastened about his own neck.
The lesson of all the ages on this point is, that a wrong done to one man,
is a wrong done to all men. It may not be felt at the moment, and the evil
day may be long delayed, but so sure as there is a moral government of the
universe, so sure will the harvest of evil come.
Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like
ours should guard. The spirit of caste is dangerous everywhere. There is the
prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle
dandy against the hard handed working man. There is, worst of all, re-
ligious prejudice; a prejudice which has stained a whole continent with
blood. It is, in fact, a spirit infernal, against which every enlightened man
should wage perpetual war. Perhaps no class of our fellow citizens has
carried this prejudice against color to a point more extreme and dangerous
than have our Catholic Irish fellow citizens, and yet no people on the face
of the earth have been more relentlessly persecuted and oppressed on
account of race and religion, than the Irish people.
But in Ireland, persecution has at last reached a point where it reacts
terribly upon her persecutors. England to-day is reaping the bitter conse-
quences of her injustice and oppression. Ask any man of intelligence to-
day, “What is the chief source of England’s weakness?” “What has re-
duced her to the rank of a second-class power?” and the answer will be
“Ireland!” Poor, ragged, hungry, starving and oppressed as she is, she is
strong enough to be a standing menace to the power and glory of England.
Fellow-citizens! We want no black Ireland in America. We want no
aggrieved class in America. Strong as we are without the negro, we are
stronger with him than without him. The power and friendship of seven
millions of people scattered all over the country,11The U.S. census of 1880 reported 6,580,793 blacks in the nation's population, residing predominantly in the former slave states. U.S. Bureau of the Census, , 333. however humble, are
not to be despised.
To-day, our Republic sits as a Queen among the nations of the earth.
Peace is within her walls and plenteousness within her palaces, but he is a
bolder and a far more hopeful man than I am, who will affirm that this
peace and prosperity will always last. History repeats itself.12A proverb found in many languages and generally credited to Thucydides. Smith, , 374. What has
happened once may happen again.
The negro, in the Revolution, fought for us and with us. In the war of
1812 Gen. Jackson,13Andrew Jackson. at New Orleans, found it necessary to call upon the
colored people to assist in its defence against England. Abraham Lincoln
found it necessary to call upon the negro to defend the Union against
rebellion, and the negro responded gallantly in all cases.
Our legislators, our Presidents, and our judges should have a care, lest,
by forcing these people, outside of law, they destroy that love of country
which is needful to the Nation’s defence in the day of trouble.
I am not here, in this presence, to discuss the constitutionality or
unconstitutionality of this decision of the Supreme Court. The decision
may or may not be constitutional. That is a question for lawyers, and not
for laymen, and there are lawyers on this platform as learned, able, and
eloquent as any who have appeared in this case before the Supreme Court,
or as any in the land. To these I leave the exposition of the Constitution; but
I claim the right to remark upon a strange and glaring inconsistency with
former decisions, in the action of the court on this Civil Rights Bill. It is a
new departure, entirely out of the line of the precedents and decisions of the
Supreme Court at other times and in other directions where the rights of
colored men were concerned. It has utterly ignored and rejected the force
and application of object and intention as a rule of interpretation. It has
construed the Constitution in defiant disregard of what was the object and
intention of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It has made no
account whatever of the intention and purpose of Congress and the President
in putting the Civil Rights Bill upon the Statute Book of the Nation. It
has seen fit in this case, affecting a weak and much-persecuted people, to
be guided by the narrowest and most restricted rules of legal interpretation.
It has viewed both the Constitution and the law with a strict regard to their
letter, but without any generous recognition of their broad and liberal
spirit. Upon those narrow principles the decision is logical and legal, of
course. But what I complain of, and what every lover of liberty in the
United States has a right to complain of, is this sudden and causeless
reversal of all the great rules of legal interpretation by which this Court was
governed in other days, in the construction of the Constitution and of laws
respecting colored people.
In the dark days of slavery, this Court, on all occasions, gave the
greatest importance to intention as a guide to interpretation. The object and
intention of the law, it was said, must prevail. Everything in favor of
slavery and against the negro was settled by this object and intention. The
Constitution was construed according to its intention. We were over and
over again referred to what the framers meant, and plain language was
sacrificed that the so affirmed intention of these framers might be
positively asserted. When we said in behalf of the negro that the Constitu-
tion of the United States was intended to establish justice and to secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we were told that the
words said so, but that that was obviously not its intention; that it was
intended to apply only to white people, and that the intention must
govern.14Douglass alludes to the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution and the decision of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott v John F. A. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 407-10.
When we came to that clause of the Constitution which declares that
the immigration or importation of such persons as any of the States may see
fit to admit shall not be prohibited,15Douglass describes Article 1, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution which prohibited the banning of the slave trade by Congress prior to 1808. and the friends of liberty declared that
that provision of the Constitution did not describe the slave-trade, they
were told that while its language applied not to slaves, but to persons, still
the object and intention of that clause of the Constitution was plainly to
protect the slave-trade, and that that intention was the law. When we came
to that clause of the Constitution which declares that “No person held to
service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another,
shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor may be due,”16Douglass quotes Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. we insisted that it neither
described nor applied to slaves; that it applied only to persons owing
service and labor; that slaves did not and could not owe service and labor;
that this clause of the Constitution said nothing of slaves or the masters of
slaves; that it was silent as to slave States or free States; that it was simply a
provision to enforce a contract; to discharge an obligation between two
persons capable of making a contract, and not to force any man into
slavery, for the slave could not owe service or make a contract.
We affirmed that it gave no warrant for what was called the “Fugitive
Slave Bill,” and we contended that that bill was therefore unconstitutional;
but our arguments were laughed to scorn by that Court. We were told that
the intention of the Constitution was to enable masters to recapture their
slaves, and that the law of Ninety-three17The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. and the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850 were constitutional.
Fellow-citizens! while slavery was the base line of American society,
while it ruled the church and the state, while it was the interpreter of our law
and the exponent of our religion, it admitted no quibbling, no narrow rules
of legal or scriptural interpretations of Bible or Constitution. It sternly
demanded its pound of flesh,18An allusion to , act 4, sc. 1, line 99. no matter how much blood was shed in the
taking of it. It was enough for it to be able to show the intention to get all it
asked in the Courts or out of the Courts. But now slavery is abolished. Its
reign was long, dark and bloody. Liberty now, is the base line of the
Republic. Liberty has supplanted slavery, but I fear it has not supplanted
the spirit or power of slavery. Where slavery was strong, liberty is now
weak.
O for a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true to the
claims of humanity, as the Supreme Court formerly was to the demands of
slavery! When that day comes, as come it will, a Civil Rights Bill will not
be declared unconstitutional and void, in utter and flagrant disregard of the
objects and intentions of the National legislature by which it was enacted,
and of the rights plainly secured by the Constitution.
This decision of the Supreme Court admits that the Fourteenth Amend-
ment is a prohibition on the States. It admits that a State shall not abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, but commits
the seeming absurdity of allowing the people of a State to do what it
prohibits the State itself from doing.
It used to be thought that the whole was more than a part; that the great
included the less, and that what was unconstitutional for a State to do was
equally unconstitutional for an individual member of a State to do. What is
a State, in the absence of the people who compose it? Land, air and water.
That is all. As individuals, the people of the State of South Carolina may
stamp out the rights of the negro wherever they please, so long as they do
not do so as a State. All the parts can violate the Constitution, but the whole
cannot. It is not the act itself, according to this decision, that is unconstitu-
tional. The unconstitutionality of the case depends wholly upon the party
committing the act. If the State commits it, it is wrong, if the citizen of the
State commits it, it is right.
O consistency, thou art indeed a jewel! What does it matter to a colored
citizen that a State may not insult and outrage him, if a citizen of a State
may? The effect upon him is the same, and it was just this effect that the
framers of the Fourteenth Amendment plainly intended by that article to
prevent.
It was the act, not the instrument, which was prohibited. It meant to
protect the newly enfranchised citizen from injustice and wrong, not
merely from a State, but from the individual members of a State. It meant
to give him the protection to which his citizenship, his loyalty, his alle-
giance, and his services entitled him; and this meaning, and this purpose,
and this intention, is now declared unconstitutional and void, by the Su-
preme Court of the United States.
I say again, fellow-citizens, O for a Supreme Court which shall be as
true, as vigilant, as active, and exacting in maintaining laws enacted for the
protection of human rights, as in other days was that Court for the destruc-
tion of human rights!
It is said that this decision will make no difference in the treatment of
colored people; that the Civil Rights Bill was a dead letter, and could not be
enforced. There is some truth in all this, but it is not the whole truth. That
bill, like all advance legislation, was a banner on the outer wall19Douglass adapts , act 5, sc. 5, line 1. of
American liberty, a noble moral standard, uplifted for the education of the
American people. There are tongues in trees, books, in the running
brooks,—sermons in stones.20, act 2, sc. 1, lines 16-17. This law, though dead, did speak.21A paraphrase of Heb. 11: 4. It
expressed the sentiment of justice and fair play, common to every honest
heart. Its voice was against popular prejudice and meanness. It appealed to
all the noble and patriotic instincts of the American people. It told the
American people that they were all equal before the law; that they belonged
to a common country and were equal citizens. The Supreme Court has
hauled down this flag of liberty in open day, and before all the people, and
has thereby given joy to the heart of every man in the land who wishes to
deny to others what he claims for himself. It is a concession to race pride,
selfishness and meanness, and will be received with joy by every upholder
of caste in the land, and for this I deplore and denounce that decision.
It is a frequent and favorite device of an indefensible cause to misstate
and pervert the views of those who advocate a good cause, and I have never
seen this device more generally resorted to than in the case of the late
decision on the Civil Rights Bill. When we dissent from the opinion of the
Supreme Court, and give the reasons why we think that opinion unsound,
we are straightway charged in the papers with denouncing the Court itself,
and thus put in the attitude of bad citizens. Now, I utterly deny that there
has ever been any denunciation of the Supreme Court on this platform, and
I defy any man to point out one sentence or one syllable of any speech of
mine in denunciation of that Court.
Another illustration of this tendency to put opponents in a false posi-
tion, is seen in the persistent effort to stigmatize the “Civil Rights Bill” as a
“Social Rights Bill.” Now, nowhere under the whole heavens, outside of
the United States, could any such perversion of truth have any chance of
success. No man in Europe would ever dream that because he has a right to
ride on a railway, or stop at a hotel, he therefore has the right to enter into
social relations with anybody. No one has a right to speak to another
without that other’s permission. Social equality and civil equality rest upon
an entirely different basis, and well enough the American people know it;
yet to inflame a popular prejudice, respectable papers like the New York
Times and the Chicago Tribune, persist in describing the Civil Rights Bill
as a Social Rights Bill.22The Chicago , the New York , and other newspapers editorialized favorably upon the Supreme Court's decision declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Douglass’s prompt criticism of the decision drew censure from the editors of these newspapers who condemned the interpretation of that law as a “social rights bill," protecting equal accommodation in hotels, railroads, and theaters. Washington , 16 October 1883; New York , 16, 18 October 1883; Chicago , 19, 20 October 1883.
When a colored man is in the same room or in the same carriage with
white people, as a servant, there is no talk of social equality, but if he is
there as a man and a gentleman, he is an offence. What makes the dif-
ference? It is not color, for his color is unchanged. The whole essence of
the thing is a studied purpose to degrade and stamp out the liberties of a
race. It is the old spirit of slavery, and nothing else. To say that because a
man rides in the same car with another, he is therefore socially equal, is one
of the wildest absurdities.
When I was in England, some years ago,23Douglass visited Great Britain in 1845-47 and again in 1859-60. I rode upon highways,
byways, steamboats, stage coaches, omnibusses; I was in the House of
Commons, in the House of Lords, in the British Museum, in the Coliseum,
in the National Gallery, everywhere; sleeping sometimes in rooms where
lords and dukes had slept; sitting at tables where lords and dukes were
sitting; but I never thought that those circumstances made me socially the
equal of lords and dukes. I hardly think that some of our Democratic friends
would be regarded among those lords as their equals. If riding in the same
car makes one equal, I think that the little poodle I saw sitting in the lap of a
lady was made equal by riding in the same car. Equality, social equality, is a
matter between individuals. It is a reciprocal understanding. I don’t think
when I ride with an educated polished rascal, that he is thereby made my
equal, or when I ride with a numbskull that it makes me his equal, or makes
him my equal. Social equality does not necessarily follow from civil equal-
ity, and yet for the purpose of a hell black and damning prejudice, our
papers still insist that the Civil Rights Bill is a Bill to establish social
equality.
If it is a Bill for social equality, so is the Declaration of Independence,
which declares that all men have equal rights; so is the Sermon on the
Mount,24Matt. 5-7 and Luke 6: 20-49. so is the Golden Rule,25Douglass paraphrases Matt. 7: 12 and Luke 6: 31. that commands us to do to others as we
would that others should do to us; so is the Apostolic teaching, that of one
blood God has made all nations to dwell on all the face of the earth; so is the
Constitution of the United States, and so are the laws and customs of every
civilized country in the world; for no where, outside of the United States, is
any man denied civil rights on account of his color.