The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for July 4, 2023
Today’s Script
(Variations occur with audio due to editing for time)
Today’s Links now below the script
You’re listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.
Thomas Jefferson was an owner of enslaved people when he wrote this line in the Declaration of Independence: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
Who could give that Consent by voting was debated by the landed White male gentry, framing what became the U.S. Constitution in 1787. James Madison encapsulated this argument, writing:
“The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed… . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] …may be overruled by a majority without property….”
We know how that worked out. By 1807 New York had abolished land requirements for White men, but kept them in place for free Black men. It wasn’t until the 15th Amendment in 1869 did all Black men theoretically get the right to vote, for which citizens of color have been fighting ever since. Women had to wait another 50 years for the 19th Amendment.
As you celebrate your freedoms this July 4th, remember that recent voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, and voting restrictions demonstrate that the freedom to vote for ALL Americans has still not been achieved – a wrong we must all fight to correct.
Find more at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org. I’m Brian Beihl.
Today’s Links
Articles & Resources:
National Archives – The Declaration of Independence
U.S. Library of Congress – The Founders and the Vote
Prof. Thomas Jewett – Jefferson, Education and The Franchise
U.S. History.org – The Expansion of the Vote: A White Man’s Democracy
National Archives – The Fifteenth Amendment
National Archives – The Nineteenth Amendment
Groups Taking Action:
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, League of Women Voters US, ACLU, Common Cause, Declaration for American Democracy
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