The Most Sacred Right (2020)

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NPR

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 16.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Frederick Douglass would live to see the Civil War, Emancipation, Black men getting the right to vote, and 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. Next week is the midterm election. So this week, we're bringing you an episode we originally published right before the 2020 election. And we're tackling a question that still feels very timely — a question that both haunted and drove Frederick Douglass his entire life. Is our democracy set up to include everyone? And if not... can it ever be?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the podcast, Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.
0:04.4	ABC News, legal contributor Brian Buckmeyer covers the rise and fall of Diddy, the allegations, and his defense, with real-time updates straight from the courtroom.
0:14.1	Find Bad Rap, wherever you get podcasts.
0:17.8	Just a quick note before we get started. This episode contains violence and language that may be upsetting to some listeners.
0:43.2	The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her claims
0:47.2	have been born of earnest struggle.
0:50.8	If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
0:54.9	Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
1:03.2	They want rain without thunder and lightning.
1:07.0	They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
1:11.9	This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
1:18.0	and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
1:25.9	Power concedes nothing without a demand.
1:30.0	It never did, and it never will.
1:39.4	These are the words of Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest minds in American history.
1:45.1	Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Douglas would live to see the Civil War, emancipation,
1:51.7	black men getting the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, and the beginning of the terrors
1:56.5	and humiliations of Jim Crow.
1:59.5	And through all of that, he kept coming back to one thing.
2:03.5	A sacred right he believed was at the heart of American democracy.
2:08.3	Voting.
2:23.7	We all know American democracy didn't start out that way.
	...

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