By Charles Degelman

The 2008 Presidential campaign is moving quickly into a second act. Characters, settings, and conflicts have all been introduced to an economically wary and war-weary audience.

By the end of Act I, February’s Super Tuesday primaries, the candidates, and the media had – with plenty of notable exceptions – managed to focus largely on issues, not personalities.

The Republican Party had opened its version of Election 2008 by introducing a handful of white male characters. Over the ensuing months, the cast was thinned to five, to three, to two players.

Now, one white male remains on the Republican stage. Although they have plenty to feud over, issues of race and gender will not figure in the Republican drama. McCain. White. Male. Period.

In contrast, the Democratic theater is buzzing with a unique, exciting, and unpredictable energy. America has never before enjoyed the possibility of a black or female president. Both candidates passionately signal their intent to come to the aid of their struggling fellow Americans.

But as the Democrats move beyond Super Tuesday, it appears that grappling with today’s critical issues – the war in Iraq, the economy, healthcare, the environment, education – may not make up the only plot lines in their drama.

The issues seem clear enough. Most Americans see – and feel, first-hand – the need for change. Voters flowed to the polls in record numbers on Super Tuesday, intent on being heard. And few American voters would publicly acknowledge race or gender as a factor in the decisions they make in the voting booth. However…

Despite the clarity of the issues and the intentions of voters and candidates alike, the exit polls from February’s Super Tuesday suggest that race and gender may play a role in American politics:

Among women voters, Hillary Clinton won over Barack Obama, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Barack Obama was the favorite among male voters, 53 percent to 42 percent.

White voters (male and female) chose Clinton over Obama 52 percent to 43 percent.

Black voters (male and female) chose Obama over Clinton 82 to 16 percent. Hispanics, Asian-Americans tended toward Clinton.

If race and gender do take the stage in the high-stakes drama of the 2008 Presidential campaign, how will they interact? Will they play bit parts? Or will they become the drama’s antagonists? An earlier epic in American history provides an eyebrow-raising back story.

Suffrage at Seneca Falls

In the early 19th century, Great Britain considered itself a leader in the abolition of slavery. They had a right to crow. In 1807, well ahead of other colonial nations, the Brits outlawed slave trade on British vessels, in the British Isles, and in its colonies.

The British were not alone in their abolitionist zeal. In the robust egalitarian (in concept, at least) environment of 1830s and ’40s America, anti-slavery societies took root and flourished. Many of these early abolitionist groups included female members.

In keeping with this egalitarian tone, American abolitionists elected several women as delegates to attend the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, a ground-breaking international abolitionist conference to be held in London.

Given the mission of this lofty, equality-driven gathering, it is easy to imagine the anger and confusion female delegates must have felt when – upon their arrival in London – a heated debate broke out among the Convention’s male representatives.

While a radical minority argued that the Anti-Slavery Convention was intended to promote equality for all, the majority of delegates hawked traditional gender roles. Women – like children – were to be seen, respected, admired even, but not heard.

The majority ruled: Female delegates would be sidelined at the World Anti-Slavery Convention. The weaker sex would, however, be permitted to “spectate” from the balcony.

Two American female delegates, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, chose not to spectate. Although Mott was allowed to deliver a speech she had prepared, she had no vote. Withdrawing, Stanton and Mott strolled the genteel parks of London and talked. In the light of their exclusion from a gathering dedicated to human rights, they had much to talk about.

In the 1840s, American women forfeited their children in a divorce, did not inherit their husband’s property at his death, were banned from participating in lawmaking, were denied access to higher education and the professions and – of course – could not vote.

Stanton and Mott decided that they would organize their own convention. The time had come, they decided, for “women’s wrongs to be laid before the public,” and that “women bore the responsibility for doing so.”

They announced plans for a convention to be held in Seneca Falls, New York, where they would discuss “…the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.”

The five-day convention attracted 300 people including 40 men. Ironically, no woman felt confident enough to conduct the proceedings. Instead, Lucretia Mott’s husband, a Quaker abolitionist and schoolteacher, assumed the “chair man’s” role.

As in London, issues of race and gender rapidly emerged at Seneca Falls. Should the matter of women’s rights be introduced to a community that had dedicated its limited resources to the abolition of slavery? Did a campaign to secure equality for females deserve a place next to the struggle to emancipate the slaves? Should a woman have the right to vote?

At that point, a remarkable figure stepped onto the Seneca Falls podium. By the time he was 20, Frederick Douglass had defied the taboos of Southern slave life, learned to read, escaped from his master’s plantation, and earned legal status as a free man in New York City.

Douglass developed into a powerful orator, writer, and editor who advocated the equality of all people, be they black, female, American Indian, or immigrant. Although his speech at Seneca Falls was not recorded, Douglass later expressed gratitude that …

“… I was sufficiently enlightened, when only a few years from slavery, to support this resolution for woman suffrage … When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question.”

Douglass’s passionate speech transcended gender and race and unified the two movements with a clear and stirring premise: No one is free until everyone is free.

The troubled Seneca Falls dele­gates agreed to recognize the campaign for women’s rights as equal – not opposite – to the struggle to abolish slavery. They all – women, men, abolitionists, suffragists, mechanics, teachers, lawyers, and an 18-year-old factory girl who dreamed of becoming a printer – voted to adopt America’s first feminist manifesto.

Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, this feminist Declaration of Sentiments demanded equal participation in trades, professions, and commerce, and that women should “secure to themselves their sacred right” to vote.

“Unite … to do right!”

Charlotte Woodward, the 18-year-old factory worker who wanted to become a printer, lived to cast her vote in the 1920 Presidential election. Frederick Douglass lived to witness the emancipation of his people. We have moved light years from the bold-faced race and gender conflicts of the World Anti-Slavery Conference and the feminist gathering at Seneca Falls.

But today, as we move into the elaboration of conflict that always characterizes a second act, it appears that we are, once again, stalked by the twin specters that haunted London and Seneca Falls more than 150 years ago. Frederick Douglass, escaped slave, black abolitionist, and male feminist stepped into the fray at Seneca Falls and proclaimed: “I would unite with anybody to do right.”

Today, how can we unite to do right? Where is Frederick Douglass when we need her?

Charles Degelman (www.charlesdegelman.org) is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles.

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