Celebrate the First Amendment All Summer Long | |
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This summer, we're highlighting resources for each of the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment in celebration of our newest gallery, The First Amendment, opening September 6, 2023
Follow along as we dive into speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition
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The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools Featuring Dr. Rachel Devlin
Wednesday, June 28 I 11:45 a.m. ET
Join historian Dr. Rachel Devlin for discussion of her book, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools. The struggle to desegregate America’s schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls continued to lead the way, making up the vast majority of desegregation “firsts.” In A Girl Stands at the Door, Dr. Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why Black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. Highlighting the extraordinary bravery of young black women, this bold revisionist account illuminates today’s ongoing struggles for equality.
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The Road To Equality: 1950-2023 Featuring Bob Skiba
Wednesday, June 28 I 12:45 p.m. ET
This hour-long illustrated presentation begins by examining what it was like to be queer in 1950s and 1960s America, an era that saw members of the queer community demonized, medicated, or even arrested. It continues with Philadelphia’s response to this oppression—the Annual Reminder demonstrations that occurred every July 4 from 1965–969 in front of Independence Hall, which were the first organized, regularly recurring protests for gay rights in the country. Finally, it tells how the Stonewall riots changed that paradigm, morphing those Annual Reminders into gay pride marches, which gave birth to the modern LGBTQIA+ movement. Bob Skiba is the curator of collections at the John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia. He teaches a “Queer Culture and Community” class for Jefferson University, writes “The Gayborhood Guru” history blog, and directs the Philadelphia LGBT Mapping Project.
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Virtual Tour: Civil War and Reconstruction
Wednesday, June 21 I 12 p.m. ET
Join a museum educator live to explore the Center’s compelling exhibit, Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality. Learn how constitutional clashes over slavery set the stage for the Civil War, and how the nation transformed the Constitution after the war during the Reconstruction period. Along the way, you’ll hear the stories of people central to the conflict over slavery and give you an up-close look at special artifacts on display. In honor of Juneteenth, June’s tour will also highlight the events of June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and nearly five months after the 13th Amendment was passed, when enslaved people in Texas learned that they were free and that slavery in America had officially been abolished.
Monthly Civil War & Reconstruction Tours made possible through the generosity of TD Bank.
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Constitution 101 Curriculum: The First Amendment
Constitution 101 is a 15-unit asynchronous, semester-long curriculum that provides students with a basic understanding of the Constitution’s text, history, structure, and caselaw. Drawing on primary source documents from our new, curated online Founders’ Library—containing over 170 historical texts and over 70 landmark Supreme Court cases selected by leading experts of different perspectives—students will study the historical and philosophical foundations of America’s founding principles from a range of diverse voices.
Dive in to the First Amendment Module to explore the amendment's text and history, debates over the First Amendment’s five freedoms, analyze landmark Supreme Court cases, and examine how the First Amendment has been used by groups of all perspectives to promote their vision of a more perfect Union.
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This Week in Constitutional History | |
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Can You Burn the U.S. Flag?
June 21, 1989
In August 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson participated in a political demonstration to protest the policies of the Reagan Administration. As part of the demonstration, Johnson soaked a U.S. Flag in kerosene and set it ablaze. No individual was injured or threatened in the act.
Charged with desecrating a venerated object in a Texas statue, Johnson appealed this decision.
The question before the Supreme Court: Is the desecration of an American flag, by burning or otherwise, a form of speech that is protected under the First Amendment?
Head over to Constitution Daily to see how the justices ruled.
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More From the National Constitution Center | |
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What Are "True Threats" Under the First Amendment?
In April, the Supreme Court heard a case about a Colorado man, Billy Ray Counterman, who was sentenced to over four years in prison for stalking due to threatening Facebook messages that he sent to a singer named C.W.
Counterman argued that the charges violated his speech rights and that his messages were not “true threats,” which is a kind of speech not protected under the First Amendment.
In this episode, we dive into the facts and issues in the Counterman v. Colorado case, the history of “true threats” doctrine under the First Amendment, and recap the oral arguments, including whether the justices might decide that “true threats” should be determined by an objective test, such as if a reasonable person would regard the statement as a threat of violence; or whether they might find that it depends on the speaker’s specific intent. Genevieve Lakier of the University of Chicago and Gabe Walters of FIRE join host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss.
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Thank you for being part of our community of educators. If you have any questions we’d love to hear from you. Please email the education team at [email protected]. | | | | |
