As Activists Continue to Use Technology to Fight for Justice, Access Matters

Those advocating for a freer and more just America have always used the latest communications technology to further their aims. In 1841, abolitionist Frederick Douglass launched the North Star newspaper using the advanced communications technology of the 19th century, the printing press, to fight for the freedom of black people. Douglass and the suffragists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries followed in the tradition of the great pamphleteers, such as Thomas Paine, who built support among fellow colonists to separate themselves from the king of England.