Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0001-6376-6132

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Keywords

Equality, Full citizenship, Power, Black abolitionist perspectives, Abolitionist speech, First Amendment, Social Movements

Abstract

Subordinate groups form social movements to contest societal norms and practices that sustain inequality. Social mobilization by subordinates can spark countermovements by privileged classes who perceive egalitarianism as a threat to their economic, political, and social power. Privileged-group countermovements often seek to suppress speech that challenges oppression, known as liberation speech. In the nineteenth century, defenders of enslavement suppressed “liberation speech” by legal and extralegal means in order to maintain Whites’ social dominance. Abolitionist resistance to speech suppression helped foster a culture of free speech that created a foundation for First Amendment doctrines developed in the twentieth century. Drawing from this history, legal scholars counsel against any restrictions on speech—including racist speech. These arguments, though powerful, tend to submerge the ultimate goal of abolitionism. Abolitionists struggled to achieve emancipation and full citizenship for Blacks, not simply freedom of speech. If abolitionist views on speech should influence First Amendment interpretation, then this same history should have even greater importance for contemporary equality theories. Two abolitionist concepts have particular relevance for contemporary equality debates and the exercise of speech by subordinate groups. First, abolitionists defined the attainment of full citizenship in concrete or material terms—not simply as a matter of formal equality. Second, abolitionists argued that citizenship obligated the state to provide important social resources for human flourishing—particularly formal education and land. Abolitionist conceptions of equality conflict with prevailing legal equality norms, including Supreme Court doctrine, which construes the Fourteenth Amendment as compelling formal equality, instead of substantive justice, and securing negative, rather than positive, rights. Although the Roberts Court attempts to situate its equality doctrine within a civil rights tradition, the Court’s conception of equality has no support in abolitionism or subsequent antiracism movements. On the contrary, the Court’s equality framework contradicts the vision of equality that Blacks deem essential for freedom and full citizenship.

First Page

1649

Publication Title

California Law Review

Comments

Copyright © 2026 Darren Lenard Hutchinson

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