Frederick Douglass and America’s Free Speech Crisis

Kenneth B. Morris

On December 3, 1860, my great ancestor Frederick Douglass rose at Tremont Temple in Boston to deliver his address The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? A mob erupted, shouted him down, and overwhelmed the abolitionist gathering. The authorities stood idle. Douglass left the hall unharmed, but his voice and the movement that night were silenced.

Six days later, on December 9, undaunted by the mob, he stood again before an audience, this time at Boston Music Hall, and delivered what I believe to be one of the greatest defenses of free speech in American history: A Plea for Free Speech in Boston.

In that oration, Frederick Douglass argued that suppressing speech is not just an “injury to the speaker.” It is, he declared, a “double wrong,” because it also robs the audience of its right to hear.

That phrase, “a double wrong,” struck me when I first absorbed it. Too often, free speech is imagined only in terms of the speaker: the right to stand up, to publish, to perform, to protest. My forbear asked us to consider something at the heart of freedom itself, the capacity of people to weigh words with their own minds and draw their own conclusions.

When you and I are denied the chance to hear for ourselves, something essential is taken from us. When voices are cut off before they ever reach our ears, we are all diminished. The defense of free speech is not only about protecting my right to say what I want. It is also about protecting your right, our collective right, to hear, to weigh, and to decide.

That perspective matters more than ever. The killing of Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University was a brutal crime, and murder must never be the answer to words, no matter how offensive or dangerous. I found Kirk’s rhetoric corrosive and harmful, but even the most poisonous speech must be met with reason, not bullets; rejection, not bloodshed.

Yet violence is not the only way speech is being silenced. In the wake of the Kirk tragedy, President Trump has sought to exploit the moment, weaponizing the federal government, from the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi to the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr, to go after his critics.

Bondi openly talked about prosecuting “hate speech” before later backtracking, even though there is no such exception in American law. Carr, like a mob boss, threatened television networks into canceling shows. Trump has filed lawsuits against the media not to win in court but to intimidate critics into submission.

Each of these may look different, but they all work the same way. They narrow the space in which Americans can speak, and they deprive the rest of us of the chance to hear.

Frederick Douglass would have seen this coming. In his December 9 remarks, he called free speech “the dread of tyrants” because it exposes the weakness of unjust power. People who cannot defend their ideas will always try to suppress discussion instead. If they cannot bear scrutiny, they move to extinguish the exchange altogether. That was true of slaveholders in Douglass’s time, and it is true of autocrats today who wield their power in an effort to crush dissent.

Thinking of free speech in terms of the audience also forces us to be honest about what is at stake. To silence one voice is not just to end a sentence. It is to shut down a conversation. It is to deny others the chance to sharpen their ideas, test their convictions, and grow wiser or even more resolute.

And it also denies the speaker something essential: the opportunity to be confronted, to hear the counterarguments, and perhaps even to change their own views. The double wrong harms both the speaker and the listener, and in doing so, it weakens democracy itself.

I carry this truth personally. As the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington, I know their work depended on speech that many found dangerous, even threatening. Abolitionists were branded as troublemakers. Educators and civil rights leaders were accused of stirring unrest.

But it was precisely their ability to speak, and the public’s ability to hear them, that gave their campaigns power. The late Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, warned us that “without the press, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings.” Without free speech, there is no lift. Without the right to hear, there is no audience to carry truth forward.

Yet I watch today as more and more people grow comfortable with the idea that some words should be banned outright or met with force.

A recent YouGov survey reported in the Wall Street Journal reveals a troubling generational divide: 93 percent of Baby Boomers and 86 percent of Generation X say violence is never acceptable as a response to offensive speech. Among Millennials, that number falls to 71 percent, and among Gen Z it drops to 58 percent. More than 40 percent of young Americans are thus prepared to excuse violence in place of argument.

That final statistic should stop us dead in our tracks. Suppose we lose sight of the fact that every significant step forward in this country was powered by words someone considered dangerous. In that case, we abandon the very engine of American progress.

Next week, I will be in Boston for our fifth annual #DouglassWeek 2025 events, which run from September 28 through October 4. The week will feature events across the city and beyond, celebrating the legacy of Frederick Douglass and the ongoing fight for justice. Some of these gatherings will take place in the very neighborhoods where he traversed, spoke, and organized. Tremont Temple itself still stands, rebuilt but enduring.

To return to Boston with my family name at a time when the nation is once again struggling with speech and silence feels almost too fitting. History is not abstract. It is alive in those streets, churches, and halls, just as it is alive in our current debates.

This is why my ancestor’s words still matter. In his 1860 speech, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston, Frederick Douglass declared, “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.” His warning hangs over us now as we face the twin dangers of political violence and government overreach.

And it is not only mobs that can commit double wrongs. When a president uses the power of his office to punish critics, when agencies are bent toward intimidating opponents, when lawsuits are filed not to seek truth but to chill dissent, the danger multiplies.

It is one thing for individuals to try to silence each other. It is another, far worse thing when the machinery of government is turned against the people it is meant to serve. That is the very scenario my ancestor warned against, and it is happening again in our own time.

If we want to honor Frederick Douglass’s conviction, we must defend not only the speech we agree with but also the speech we find most offensive, because in doing so, we are really defending our own right to hear. That right does not promise comfort. It does not guarantee agreement. It promises something much greater: the chance to grow wiser, freer, and stronger through the clash of ideas.

The alternative is silence. And as Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the landmark Supreme Court case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette in 1943, “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” In other words, forcing people into agreement does not create unity; it only establishes the stillness of repression, a silence where freedom and dissent have already been buried.

Too many people today are tempted to believe that silencing opponents, whether through law, pressure, or violence, is the most effective way to dominate others. Free speech is not a threat to democracy. It is its lifeblood. To deny one person’s right to speak is to restrict everyone’s right to listen.

And when we lose that right, we suffer the double wrong my ancestor warned about. Strike down the right to hear, and you strike down liberty itself.