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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, AUG 13–19, 2025  
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_ Frederick Douglass’ Winning Oratorical Debut (1841), Setting the
Standard for Jury Nullification (1670), “Free Joan Little!” Done
That. (1975), A Dire Warning, Heeded Not (1975), VERY Late, But Never
TOO Late (1920) _

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_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.”
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_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.
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_“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. [link removed]
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_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.
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_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.
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For more People's History, visit
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* Frederick Douglass
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* abolitionism
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* jury trial
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* National Security Agency
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* Government Spying
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* womens rights
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