Page 67 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

GARRISON,
56
put
abolitionist,
GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD (1805-1879), a prominent WILLIAM LLOYD
forward the law of "nonresistance" to combat slavery. He believed that the
slavery of the Negroes was only a particular instance of universal coercion and
advanced the principle that under no pretext has any man the right to dominate
or use coercion over his fellows. Leo Tolstoy credits Garrison with being ' 'the
first to proclaim this principle as a rule for the organization of the life of men"
and proclaimed him as "one of the greatest reformers and promoters of true
human progress."
Garrison used the power of the press to spread his creed far and wide. In
January 1831, the first issue of his paper, the Liberator, appeared with a motto:
"Our country is the world—our countrymen are mankind." Although its pri-
mary objective was the abolition of slavery, it did not overlook other moral and
social evils. Garrison was also an activist in other movements such as women's
and civil rights and religious reform. He spoke strongly in favor of the enfran-
chisement of women at the Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massa-
chusetts, in 1850. Garrison's views on women's issues are expressed in these
words: "I have been derisively called a 'Women's Rights Man.' I know no such
distinction. I claim to be a Human Rights Man, and wherever there is a human
being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex
or complexion."
On the same principle of human fraternity and true to his motto, he espoused
the cause of the Chinese by denouncing the national policy of excluding them
from the country on the grounds of race.
In addition to being a newspaperman, Garrison was active as a lecturer in
the antislavery cause. Frederick Douglass, awed by his marvelous power as a
speaker, narrated the following account of an address by Garrison in Nantucket
in 1841:
Those who heard him oftenest and known him longest, were astonished at his masterly
effort. .. The orator swayed a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by the simple
.
majesty of his all-controlling thought, converting his hearers into the express image of
his own soul. That night there were a thousand Garrisons in Nantucket.

SOURCES: V. G. Chertkoff and Florence Holah, A Short Biography of William Lloyd
Garrison with an Introductory Appreciation of His Life and Work by Leo Tolstoy, 1904;
Archibald Henry Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison: The Abolitionist, 1891; Oliver John-
son, W. L. Garrison and Times, 1881; Selections from the Writings and Speeches of
William Lloyd Garrison, 1852.
Anju G. Chaudhary

GATEKEEPING. Even in the simplest of communication, a sender and a re-
ceiver serve as gatekeepers, allowing some information to be transmitted and
received, while slamming the gates on other information that could have been
shared. The term "gatekeeper," however, often is reserved for those in relatively
large and complex communication organizations, especially the news media,