Why I Became A Woman's Rights Man Author:Frederick Douglass The third album in TBM Records spoken word series, "Frederick Douglass' Greatest Speeches," Why I Became A Woman's Rights Man," the name of an actual Douglass speech, contains 50 years of Frederick Douglass' passionate defense of and tributes to women forged into one stirring speech. The material was compiled and edited from Mr. Douglass' w... more »ritings on women's rights by Frederick A. Morsell, the distinguished Afro- American actor and scholar whose theatrical portrayal of Frederick Douglass has received national acclaim. Frederick Douglass gave extraordinary support to abolitionist and suffragist women--and they to him! He envisioned men and women as co-inheritors of the earth, its responsibilities, and its rewards. He once said, "To me, the sun in the heavens is not more visible than is the right of woman, equally with man, to participate in all that concerns human welfare. Until this right is admitted, secured and exercised, count me among the friends of the woman's rights movement." This album starts gently, an intellectual lullaby, and then gains in force, as a great freedom fighter defends and pays tribute to women. Frederick Douglass "had hardly brushed the dust of slavery from his feet and stepped upon the free soil of Massachusetts" when he met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Of that meeting he said, "I shall never forget how she unfolded her views to me on this question of the exclusion of women from having a hand in the governing of herself...Mrs. Stanton knew it was not only necessary to break the silence of women and make her voice heard, but woman must have a clear, palpable and comprehensive measure set before her, one worthy of her highest ambition and her best exertions." It was Frederick Douglass who seconded Mrs. Stanton'resolution at the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in July 1848 "that it was the duty of the women of this country to secure their sacred right to the elective franchise." Mr. Douglass continued until the day of his death in 1895 to articulate and defend equality for women.« less