Frederick Douglass, ca. February 1818 (Cordova, Md.) – February 20, 1895 (Washington, DC)
VP candidate for Equal Rights Party (aka People's Party aka Cosmo-Political Party aka National Radical Reformers) (1872)
Running mate with nominee: Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)
Popular vote: 0 (0%)
Electoral vote: 0/352
The campaign:
Our brief thumbnail format cannot really give justice to just how far ahead of their time and how visionary both names on this ticket were. Even after a century and a half these two seem so modern.
The fact that Woodhull was female and had an African-American running mate stirred up so much controversy that little notice was paid to her age-- she was too young to be President according to the requirements of the Constitution.
Douglass had no role in the campaign. He was nominated without his permission, did not participate in any electioneering for Woodhull, and apparently never made any public statement regarding being a VP candidate. On the contrary, he did some campaigning for Grant and was a presidential elector at large for New York for the Republicans.
The Woodhull/Douglass ticket did not appear on any official ballots but no doubt they did receive a number of write-in votes.
Election history:
1888 - Nomination for US President (Republican) - defeated
Other occupations: slave, preacher, abolitionist, author, newspaper publisher, human rights activist, US Ambassador to Haiti 1889-1891, US Marshal for Washington DC, Recorder of Deeds for Washington DC
Buried: Mount Hope Cemetery (Rochester, NY)
Notes:
Douglass quotes--
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
"I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress."
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground."
"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."
"The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man."
"Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain; this new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman’s right to equal liberty with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom, law, or usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power can withstand."
