Just a quick note before we get started, this episode contains violence and language that may be upsetting to some listeners.

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her claims have been born of earnest struggle.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom in yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.

Power conceits nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

These are the words of Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest minds in American history. Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Douglass would live to see the Civil War emancipation, black men getting the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, in the beginning of the terrors and humiliations of Jim Crow.

And through all of that, he kept coming back to one thing. A sacred right he believed was at the heart of American democracy, voting.

We all know American democracy didn't start out that way. Initially only land owning white men could vote. So the founding principle of representation for all was really just representation for a few.

And sure, we've made progress. People of all races and genders can now vote. But running parallel to that progress is another reality. At every step of the way, as more people have gotten the vote, more barriers have been put in their way to keep them from voting.

Will you repeat the mistakes of your fathers who sinned ignorantly? Will the country be peaceful, united and happy? Or troubled, divided and miserable?

Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country that lived up to the ideals of its founding fathers, where all people could vote, universal suffrage. And he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality.

In the face of suffering, he hoped. In the face of setbacks, he hoped. In the face of violence, he hoped. And in the face of suppression, Frederick Douglass hoped.

In a democracy, when citizens can't vote, we get a bastardized nation. We get policies that reflect the will of the few and not of the majority. We get institutions created that are designed to empower and enrich the few.

This is Carol Anderson, author of one person, no vote. How voter suppression is destroying our democracy.

Why do you think he thought the vote was the core piece in reaching that aspiration of the founding fathers as he saw it?

David Blake could probably answer that one better than I can. Because I mean, dam, it's a Pulitzer Prize winning biography.

David Blight, I teach American history at Yale University, and my most recent book is Biography, Frederick Douglass, Profit of Freedom.

We may be asked, why we wanted? I will tell you why we wanted. We wanted because it is our right first of all.

He probably would argue, you know, what's at risk here is that if you keep doing this, people will cease to believe in elections. They will cease to believe in institutions.

And if they do that, then democracy dies.

Next week is the midterm election here in the United States. So this week, we're bringing you an episode we originally published right before the 2020 election.

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