Americans during the second half of the nineteenth century believed in the concept of equality, but there was no widely agreed upon definition of the word. This common definition did not arise because equality did not focus on a particular movement, but encompassed several fields of movements. The leaders of these movements defined equality differently because they all came from different backgrounds which led them to different beliefs. Frederick Douglas, a former slave, used the word equality to promote the cause of voting rights for African Americans due to his perception that voting would lead to African Americans becoming equal to whites, while Chief Joseph, the leader of the Nez La Perce tribe, has repeatedly seen land seizures use equality to advance its cause of equal treatment under the law. Both of these were calls for social justice, but equality was also used by William Graham Sumner, an economist professor, as a way to further his cause of eliminating government intervention in big business because he saw intervention as an advantage to only one class of people. , the poor. Frederick Douglas, perhaps the most famous abolitionist in history, made it known that after the Civil War, African Americans should be equal to whites. For Douglas, the definition of equality would be “the immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every state of the Union.” Douglas thought that without this specific right “he is a slave to society”. Without the right to vote, African Americans would still be second-class citizens compared to whites, and still subject to white superiority, especially in the South, which would be very similar to slavery. Racism was widespread throughout the United States, so the thinkers... at the center of the paper... the case of Chief Joseph are getting unfair advantages from an outside source. This was not true equality. Aid to the poor was a social injustice in the eyes of big business. 9Frederick Douglas, Chief Joseph, and William Grahamn Sumner all used equality as a call for social justice, but all of these men had different opinions about what equality truly meant. the similarities occur because all these men believed that their group was put behind another group of people, therefore their group suffered. African Americans and Indians were put behind the whites, while the rights of the rich were forgotten by the public because of the poor. The context of each of these men shaped their views on equality, and each of these men used equality to advance their group's personal agenda. This is why Americans cannot agree on a common definition of the word equality.