This Week in People’s History, Aug 13–19, 2025
Frederick Douglass’ Winning Oratorical Debut (1841)
AUGUST 13 IS THE 184TH ANNIVERSARY of the meeting that launched Frederick Douglass on his long career as a militant abolitionist and leader of the struggle for the civil and political rights for all, especially African-Americans and women.
Douglass was only 23 years old. Less than three years had passed since he emancipated himself by escaping enslavement in Maryland. Yet here he was on Nantucket Island, eloquently describing his experience as an enslaved person who had taken the dangerous step of taking flight, first to New York City and then to Massachusetts.
On August 13, 1841, Douglass was speaking to a rapt audience of more than a thousand members and supporters of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at their annual convention. In the same place, two days earlier, he had for the first time in his life, spoken to an audience consisting mostly of white people, and he had been very anxious because his experience had taught him to expect a hostile reception.
He recalled later that he had spoken “reluctantly,” because “I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, [and then] when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease.”
When Douglas took a seat after making his remarks, the prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison stood to ask the room, “Have we been listening to a thing, a piece of property, or a man?” The audience passionately replied: “A man! A man!”
Over the following two days Douglass was asked to speak to the convention twice more. By the third day, he was so eloquent and at ease that he was asked to join the staff of the anti-slavery society as a speaker and organizer, which he did.
Douglass devoted his very substantial brains and energy to the abolition of slavery and to Union victory in the Civil War. Immediately after the war he was one of the founders of the American Equal Rights Association, the purpose of which was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.” https://archivesfoundation.org/newsletter/an-orator-for-the-ages-frederick-douglass
Setting the Standard for Jury Nullification (1670)
AUGUST 14 IS THE 355TH ANNIVERSARY of a famous legal precedent upholding a jury’s absolute right to reach any verdict it chooses, which continues to be in effect today.
In 1670, two prominent Quakers, William Mead and William Penn (the same William Penn who later had much of the responsibility for the establishment of Pennsylvania) had been arrested and charged with preaching to an unlawful assembly in London.
There was no question they were guilty as charged, because in England it was then a crime for Quakers to preach or to worship according to their faith. Even so, a 12-person jury acquitted both of them. What happened next created the precedent that still applies.
The outraged presiding judges arrested the members of the jury and ordered each of them to pay a substantial fine. The members of the jury filed a habeas corpus petition in a higher court, which ruled that a jury’s solemn duty was to deliver justice, no matter what the law. And so the law still stands wherever the English system of justice is in force. https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1686&context=facpubs
“Free Joan Little!” Done That. (1975)
AUGUST 15 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the acquittal of Joan Little, after her trial for first-degree murder. Little, who is Black, had been charged with having killed white Beaufort County, North Carolina, jailer Clarence Alligood before escaping from jail, where she was serving a sentence for breaking and entering.
Little did not deny stabbing Alligood with an icepick, but claimed she had done so in self-defense when Alligood tried to rape her, Little’s trial was a cause célèbre for thousands of feminists and anti-racist activists in the U.S. and internationally.
During the year between her indictment and her trial, “Free Joan Little” had become the rallying cry for large demonstrations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta and scores of other localities. Her defense won the support of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Organization for Women, the National Black Feminist Organization, the Third World Women’s Alliance and the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice and others.
After a 5-week trial, the Raleigh, N.C., jury needed less than 90 minutes to conclude that Little was innocent because she was telling the truth. https://www.blackpast.org/?swp_form%5Bform_id%5D=2&swps=Joan%20Little
A Dire Warning, Heeded Not (1975)
AUGUST 17 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of a profoundly disturbing moment in the long history of the U.S. government’s programs to spy on anyone in the United States, citizen or not.
After leading a seven-month-long U.S. Senate investigation of government spying, the head of that investigation, Sen. Frank Church, during an interview on NBC’s weekly program, Meet the Press, said this: “ . . . the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. . . . Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
“If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. . . .
“I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
During the interview, Church never said the name of the agency he was describing, but it was quickly clear that he was talking about the National Security Agency. During the five decades that have elapsed since Church’s warning, the NSA’s ability vacuum up private communications has only grown, and Church’s looked-for method to make certain that the NSA “operate within the law and under proper supervision” has never been established. https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congress
VERY Late, But Never TOO Late (1920)
AUGUST 18 IS THE 105TH ANNIVERSARY of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, establishing the right of women in the U.S. to vote.
Women's right to vote had been a major U.S. political issue for more than 70 years, gaining support steadily, but always falling short of the necessary majority in Congress. For more than 30 years Congress had been considering the 19th Amendment, but it only passed both the House and the Senate in June 1919. It went into effect when it was ratified by the required number of states August 18, 1920. https://www.ueunion.org/es/ue-news-feature/2012/the-long-struggle-for-voting-rights
For more People's History, visit
https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/