Constitution Day Live 2021 | Liberty & Equality

welcome to Constitution Day live we are so glad to have you here um we’re coming to you live from Arlington Virginia just across the pomac river from the seat of government creator by the document we are celebrating today the Bill of Rights Institute is a nonprofit whose educational organization whose mission is to engage educate and Empower individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exist in a free Society so today is going to be a big day here at the Bill of Rights Institute my name is Rachel Davidson humph I’m director of Outreach here and I’ll be your host throughout the day B is a teacher supporting organization so we’ve designed today to be a specialist useful to teachers and students we have a full day of programming for you with a special guest from historians to Scholars you can find the full list of our run-of show today in all of our streams we encourage you to submit your questions throughout the day and we’ll answer them live on air with our guests our first episode coming up now so let’s go to start off our show I would I am honored to introduce Dr David Bob president of the Bill of Rights Institute great to see you Rachel great to be with you today it’s very exciting day it’s the start of all of our programming and so David has been president here atbi for seven years now and we’ve seen some incredible growth throughout that time um including this show this annual event so David today is Constitution Day and we wanted to start off with a discussion of what’s the importance of Constitution Day each day that I come into this office which as you said at the top of the show is just across the pomac river from Washington DC I see the Marine Corps Memorial the famous raising of the flag on Mount cachi from World War II and some days I see more people out there looking at the looking at the um that beautiful scene and sometimes they’re soldiers sometimes they’re people that have taken an oath to this document that we’re celebrating today the thing that I’m struck by is is that there was something about that spirit in the document something about the words there something about the ideas in it that have caused not just Soldiers and Sailors Marine Corps members but for now more than 200 years presidents and those who wish to come to this country too I saw a documentary

recently went back and and viewed it it’s by Alexandra Pelosi and it’s called citizen USA it goes to a naturalization cereem Cy in each of the 50 states and you know the beautiful thing is their reflection as naturalized citizens on the day in which they take the oath is about Liberty it’s about equality it’s about the two things that we’re focusing on today and that caused me to think of a friend a friend who came to the United States from North Korea Tia Han was not her real name and is not her real name but what Tia experienced in her home country was something that is very foreign to those of us who have lived under the Constitution and that is absolute and complete tyranny Tia did not have the ability to enjoy any of the freedoms growing up and so she wanted to escape and she sought a better life such that you should go back and see at one point in the future a reunited Korea I think that’s the things that we’re thinking that I’m thinking about today on Constitution Day so you mentioned Liberty and equality and you’re a scholar of Frederick Douglas so Frederick Douglas thought a lot about Liberty and equality especially as it relates to the Constitution why can you tell us a little bit more about his understanding and kind of how we should think about it today Frederick Douglas is a a person who had really a hate love a LoveHate relationship you could say but the hate came before and I’ll I’ll I’ll use that word uh advisedly but but it’s one that I think he felt as a person who spent the first 20 years of his life under enslavement somebody who felt that that document and the things that were put into it did not apply to him and he reflected on that after he escaped uh his captivity and at first his thinking was you know there were there was a compromise made back in the forging of that document that left behind too many people and for a good long while in his adult life that’s the view that he took as he gained more more experience and as he started reading the debates that led up to the crafting of that document what Douglas came to realize is actually there was something more happening that what looked on the face of it a compromise that saw no possibility for people like him what he saw is what he came to um uh call a glorious Liberty document a glorious Liberty document is a Far Far Cry from calling it a compact with the devil a blood soaked Covenant so I think what Douglas teaches us about Liberty and equality is that there is in that document despite the fact that it it it doesn’t always seem to us that the constitution lives up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence there’s something really profound in those words

we the people because what dulus reflected on is something I think that we can see today which is that there is a lot of alienation there’s a lot of dissension about this document it’s not always been one in which we’ve had as Americans uh a Unity or a unanimity of of of understanding about the Constitution right so thinking about Douglas and this theme of Liberty and equality in the Constitution that was the theme we chose not only for for this day this is actually the culmination of our year study of Liberty and equality but what those two Core Concepts today what is what what should we be thinking about what’s their meaning you know I think of if we hearken back for a moment to to to 1852 Douglas uh started with the Declaration of Independence when he reflected on the Constitution I know today we’re going to talk about the relationship between those two documents those two big Ideas Liberty and equality i’ I’d refer everybody to a speech even as you think about what’s the significance for today go back to 1852 go back to that speech that Douglas gave what to the slave is the 4th of July because it’s that tension that that that I talked about just a minute ago that he was living in this speech and I think that’s a tension that we’re living out today in the early part of the speech he says you know this is this is your day right he’s saying that he doesn’t feel like he’s part of the full American citizenship because in fact in 1852 he could not be and I think there’s a lot of Americans that are feeling that same thing today that they don’t feel part of the American promise that for various reasons related to our history present day inequality present day deprivation of justice that they feel like this day and other such Civic celebrations do not include them and I think as we reflect today what we want to understand and really really bring to this program and to the work that we do as teachers the study that we do as students is that there is the possibility of what Douglas called saving principles because in that same speech that he talked a lot about alienation he also said you know there’s something in this document this glorious Liberty document of the Constitution that which is the promise of Liberty and equality for all period no exceptions and Douglas felt as he grew older and as he worked hard that equality and Liberty would acre to all Americans more and more seen if you will by those founding documents and I think that’s something that we really want to see happen today that more and more of our fellow citizens in a huge Nation 330 million plus people feel seen by the Constitution we know that it has those saving principles in it we hope that so many others can come to that knowledge as well right and we still have a little bit of time for our for our discussion

in your remarks you’re you’re bringing up a lot of themes that we’ve been talking here at Bri about specifically in our work with the educating for American democracy initiative can you talk a little bit about your work in that process and how the themes of Liberty and equality really came out in educating for American democracy’s framework yeah for the teachers uh and and students who haven’t seen this just Google educating for American democracy you’ll find a a a a big what’s called a road map and what it really does is it takes Civics and history and makes a double helix out of them and the idea is as you just said Rachel that Liberty in equality are Touchstone themes throughout it points us over and over again in this road map to the fact that the Declaration laid out a promise and that promise has at various points been more or less fulfilled but that there’s a journey the educating for American democracy project brought together hundreds of individuals scores of organizations including the Bill of Rights Institute I was honored to be part of the now two years worth of of uh deep deliberation sometimes marked by by a good degree of disagreement and you know what I was continually reminded about throughout this process is the Constitution wasn’t designed to get rid of disagreement because after all you can’t do it we’re human beings what it does do though is allow us to manage disagreement and in forging this road map for teachers and students I was reminded that educating for American democracy as we go forward and try to bring it to uh really millions of of uh school kids all across the country it has that possibility of bringing a better sense of okay we’re not going to agree on everything but let’s go back to those saving principles let’s have discussions about how we can lay out even our disagreements talk about these tough issues you know if we’re going to talk about immigration if we’re going to talk about the debates of the day all of those things that are that are part and parcel of doing a good job of looking at history warts and all looking at Civics with The Good the Bad and the Ugly that’s happening right now today in this country and around the world we need a Common Language to be able to do that we need a common understanding of how we can work together to disagree yes but also agree around those core things that I think is the path forward absolutely and we recently had a discussion um with our home state here in Virginia with a number of teachers talking about Civic engagement so how can not only we learn about these core principles but how can we act on them and had some thoughts about about modern Civic engagement it’s been in the news quite a bit so a lot of teachers and students and and citizens are thinking about what Civic engagement means in America today how does liberty and equality play into kind of thoughtful Civic engagement well you know it it’s it’s funny we’re not taught uh we’re early in the school year but let’s let’s say you’re a senior in high school right now

on commencement day uh you might hear that now you’re going to be entering the real world college students hear that some high school students do tell you what that’s wrong you’re in the real world now you as a teenager are part of we the people you don’t even have to be a voting age and the great thing about this country and I think the great thing about civic education and something about which the educating for American democracy project the work we do at here here at B is designed to elevate the voices of young people to tell you what is true which is that you can make a difference right now and history and Civics requires a lot of study we’re convinced of that we have a lot of resources that you can dig into you need to read study learn all of those important things but the doing part is also vital uh David Mulla likes to say the founding generation you know it’s not like they sat around and said at their time isn’t it great to be the founders they did not know that their project that this constitution would be this many years on marked and commemorated and even celebrated at they didn’t know if it was going to be a success or a failure so when you’re sitting on the sidelines wondering should I get involved involved in projects in my local communities bringing my skills and talents to Bear think about the example of people like Douglas of the suffragettes of those who fought for civil rights in this country of those who today are involved in shaping things and not sitting on the sideline Civic is Civic engagement and Civic learning go hand in hand absolutely so to wrap us up um what is your you know we’re so grateful for everything that you do to support history and Civics Educators across the country leading our organization I I recently had my five-year anniversary here at V which was a lot of fun yesterday and I have to say that that your leadership and and the growth that we’ve seen in the past five years has been really powerful and and and impressive so as we’re launching Constitution Day 2021 into another year of uncertainty nationally um what is your message to Educators and students today well I think you know Rachel as we were talking and in in in marking your your five years and and uh uh really celebrating the the energy that that you bring uh to this space thank you for teaching you were a classroom teacher you’ve extended those um gifts and talents now to to work like this and the message that I’d have to Educators all across this country is thank you for what you’re doing it is without exception the most vital thing that is happening in America today if we are going to depolarize if we are going to become less costic less divided in our rhetoric not thinking of our fellow Americans as enemies but as people with whom we can do a common thing your work is the most vital and to students I’d say Jump Right In start today you know go over to a

friend that you might have had an argument about uh some some political issue or or something else seek out people with whom you disagree challenge yourself to get outside of the bubbles because if we do that and young people lead the way I think there’s a way in which we can actually see the blessings of liberty the promise of equality spread more and more in this country yeah well thank you so much David thank you for being here thank you for the work you do here at the Bill of Rights Institute and to get us to Constitution Day live so up next if you’ll come back in just a few minutes we want to explore the themes of Liberty and equality a little bit more so I’m going to be joined with a discussion uh with my dear colleagues Gary klei and um and Kirk Higgins so stay tuned we’ll be back in just a few minutes thank you David thank you Rachel

hello to all our viewers across the country we are so glad you’re joining us today for Constitution Day live remember that throughout today you can submit your questions on YouTube live stream or through Twitter or Facebook so our theme this year is liberty and equality and we wanted to take some time earlier in the day very early for those of you on the west coast to explore that theme I Am joined by my friends uh Kirk Higgins br’s director of content hello and welcome and Gary klei our director of teacher and student programs welcome gentlemen happy Constitution Day happy Constitution Day uh you may recognize these two gentlemen from past years as hosts of con ution day life Gary and Kirk you’ve post you’ve posted and been a big part of the production and development of today so let’s start off by talking about what makes Constitution Day special yeah I I think that’s a great question and really it comes down to me to an opportunity for a day to reflect on a government that or sorry a government also a document that affects our everyday lives um and I think the last couple years when Gary and I have been thinking about Constitution Day it’s kind of been thinking about that we’ve gone through sort of what’s the Unum and ebus Unum um and last year was United We Stand question mark and what we’re really trying to get at I think David touched on this in his remarks what’s the point why do we have a constitution what does it do how do we work towards getting to some kind of agreement how do we bu voting and by speaking to each other come to a place where we can have laws that we consent to and have um you know these different things that help hopefully preserve Liberty and equality which we’ll be talking about today so for me it’s about reflecting on that thinking about this all works together absolutely I mean Constitution Day is a very clear thing right it is a time where schools across the country are have programming uh that are reflecting on this document and that’s very important familiarity with the Constitution itself is absolutely essential but what I think is so exciting about history and social studies are the Big Ideas breaking it down in ways and taking a look at what are the concepts the big questions that come out of it the actions that have either supported or maybe been in conflict with this document so basically Constitution B certainly celebrates and encourages familiarity with this document from the past but then pushes further into what are these principles right what are these big Ideas these big questions that are reflected in it and I think that’s very cool yeah and so our our theme that we chose was one of the biggest ideas that that people have been thinking about and dealing with when it comes to our constitution which is this these big concepts of Liberty and equality we’ve been looking at these throughout the whole past year uh so why why did we choose that we kind of collectively as a group as the directors at B made this our theme for the years so let’s give some insight what what how did we express that theme across B this

past year yeah so like Gary mentioned those ideas of Liberty and equality sit at the heart of the Constitution because ostensibly the whole idea behind that government even having a document that out Lin how our government is supposed to operate is to ensure that people can see it people can understand it people can challenge it when it’s not living up to those things so in essence it’s built to protect those big ideas and ensure that citizens are are having their natural rights protected by the government it’s not being tramel over um so we wanted to get to that fundamental question and so throughout the year we’ve had really cool opportunities to explore that idea so I’ve had conversations with Educators where we’ve done readings from different individuals like president Calvin kulage um John Lewis civil rights activist in in later member of Congress um and Frederick Douglas Who David mentioned earlier looking at these ideas and how they’re expressed how they’re talked about how they’re thought about and how they’ve been defended debated and fought over throughout our history so it’s been a lot of fun it has been fun and and from a practical point of view you students have many opportunities to interact with these big Ideas if we’re talking about the principles of equality uh and Justice you may recognize that from our annual will we the students essay contest if you’re not familiar we’re launching another one in just a few weeks uh for next year but it asks students to like you to wrestle with these big questions equality with a capital E Justice with a capital J these are Big philosophical ideas um beyond that it also connected to our constitutional Academy for those not familiar that’s a summer program for students where they also did incredible work on these concepts of equality and justice uh our teachers were involved summer Institute with the same thing this is another program that we have uh as well as you students can look for these big principles in our weekly think the vote debate platform on our website so there’s so many opportunities to get involved in the dialogue right and that’s something we think a lot about is that dialog right not only in our conversation with history our conversation with historical documents but also in our conversations with each other so how can people get involved in all these very cool things that we do yeah yeah checking out our website and tuning in today brand Spanky new website that has all of our resources out available for you we’ve made a couple of really cool playlists to get you involved and then applications will open for we the students essay contest summer Institute and constitutional academy uh throughout the year so make sure you keep in touch but I’m so glad we went in the direction of talking about like how do we express these principles because we’re going to be expressing a lot of them over the course of the day so you guys again were very very involved in our design process so what are you most excited about yeah so dialogue is a great word it’s one we use here a lot uh and today we had a lot of good dialogues um that hopefully you’ve had a chance to check out if not we’ll be replaying them throughout the day uh but one of them the conversation that Tony had with Carol Burkin is really excellent looking at sort of what happened uh how were

these ideas being thought about during the writing of the Constitution during the Early Republic he speaks with Dr Carol Burkin about that uh and I think that historical context is interesting but it’s part of that dialogue how how did they understand it how can we come to understand it today how has that meaning changed been debated been thought about I think entering into that is really interesting on the other I’m excited about because I already got the speak T her once and I get to again today um is constitutional attorney Anastasia Bowden um from the Pacific Legal fund uh her and I talked about her favorite parts of the Constitution which is exciting um also why the document is still relevant today and I’m hoping today I can talk to a little bit about the case of mahoi vbl which is made some some waves uh in the spring over the summer just about what that case was about um but really digs into both how the Constitution operates how it is that we you know the Supreme Court uh helps protect and defend some of these rights um but also how it is that cases get there and what we think of those yeah I mean speaking of those cases we have opportunity opportunity to speak with Nick kadiche uh from our podcast Mary uh did a great job uh with uh people from Mount Vernon with these big concepts with another special Bridge from the past I’m very excited about our very own Liz Evans who spoke to teachers about these big ideas and are going to have a chance to do so again today wonderful well thank you both so much for joining me um we’ll see you both later as you mentioned so we’ll see Kirk from 12 Eastern 9 Pacific as he discusses the Constitution with legal scholar Anastasia Bowden from Pacific Legal fund and Gary will join us this afternoon at 2 Eastern 11 Pacific as one of the hosts of our live podcast uh at fabric of History where we will be joined by the special guest Nick capichi of New Hampshire Public radios Civics 101 let’s go so up next we have br’s own Mary Patterson joined by a special guest from George Washington’s Mount Vernon Mr Jeremy Ray thank you so much for joining us today we have an awesome lineup of guests throughout the day so make sure you submit your questions on our social channels YouTube Twitter and Facebook we are so honored to have Educators from across the country joining us both live and virtually throughout the day we’re especially grateful to br’s Master Teachers including Victor Harris from Ohio Kathy haggy from California and Cynthia Bader right here in Washington DC make sure you join us every hour at the top of the hour for our special live episodes of our YouTube shows and podcast you can join us to speak with Jeremy Ray from Mount Vernon and Mary Patterson host of bridge from the past at 8:00 a.m. Pacific 11: Eastern then at 9 Pacific 12 Eastern we have Anastasia Bowden from the Pacific Legal fund joining host of close reads Kirk Higgins at 10 Pacific 1 Eastern our very own scholar Tony Williams will have the one and only Carol Burkin on live to continue their scholar talk and last but

certainly not least at 11 Pacific 2 Eastern we will have the hosts of the Bill of rats Institute podcast fabric of History joined by the host of The Fabulous Civics 101 podcast Nick kidichi again please submit your questions across our social channels we are so excited to have you join us today let’s get started hello everyone welcome to Constitution Day live with the Bill of Rights Institute I am so excited to be here in our offices with Mary Patterson and our special guest from Mount Vernon Mr Jeremy Ray Mary and Jeremy met a couple of weeks ago at Mount Vernon to talk and we’re here to continue this conversation Mary Jeremy thank you for being here thanks Rachel hi everybody happy Constitution Day Jeremy thank you so much for being with us today and to continue this important conversation yeah thanks for having me if you’re new to bridge from the past we usually start with a historic image as a way to discuss really complicated ideas in US history for Constitution Day instead of using a two-dimensional image like a painting or a political cartoon we used a place Jeremy guided us through the greenhouse slave Quarters at George Washington’s Mount Vernon his historic home in Alexandria Virginia visiting Mount Vernon is a really great place to think about these principles of Liberty and equality that we’re focusing on today but it’s also a good place to think about the times when those principles weren’t Faithfully applied slavery was a big part of George Washington’s World excuse me and it was present throughout the country at the time of the Constitutional Convention so there’s this really complicated Duality to the story that we’re going to get into today so we’ll start with the story we know right from the time we’re very little we learn about George Washington as a national hero he uh is unanimously elected as the president of the Constitutional Convention he’s you know the first president of our country and he was an advocate for a strong National Union so how does Mount Vernon help us

learn about Washington’s thoughts about the Constitution and the new Republic yeah absolutely so of course Washington is generally regarded as the the founder or the father of the country and you know it’s he played a very critical role uh in the founding of the Constitution he was the president of the Constitutional Convention and we really delve into that story on the Mansion tour in our Museum uh and in a lot of our documents that you can find online on our website um Mount Vernon itself really became kind of like a uh a court of America during the crisis years uh before The Constitution under the Articles of Confederation where men like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry uh and Alexander Hamilton they’re not only visiting Washington and Mal Vernon but they’re also writing to him and getting seeking his advice pushing him uh to drive the country forward uh and so we talk a lot about that in the Mansion Tour itself you can learn about the people who were there physically occupy the space as they’re discussing these concepts of freedom and liberty and commerce and trade okay so I it’s really interesting to think about all these people you know Thomas Jefferson sitting there with you know George Washington and Alexander Hamilton and what I really love about Mount Vernon is that while it celebrates Washington as a Founder right you said this is the mansion is the court where we’re you know discussing these ideas of setting up a strong union but it also it elevates the stories of the men and women who were enslaved on Washington’s estate and their lives were very much bound up with Washington and his family so the words slavery and slave never appear in the Constitution but as we said slavery was very much a part of Washington’s world and it was present throughout the country at the time of the Constitutional Convention so what were George Washington’s thoughts on slavery right so when George Washington was a young man uh or excuse me a boy he was born into a society uh that not only had slavery but really had codified the system to uh kind of perpetuate it uh so he was born into that system me he really honestly didn’t see a whole lot wrong with it initially um it was a way for him to grow his wealth it was a way for him to expand the uh operations on the plantations uh but we really start to see a shift in his viewpoints on slavery around the Revolutionary War um I don’t think it’s something that you can do fight in a war for independence on the ideals of freedom and liberty and not see the contradictions inherent in owning human beings and forcing them to do things against their will Washington’s also meeting men like the marqu de Lafayette um John lawrens men who felt that perhaps these ideals these principles should apply to everybody U so after the war you start to see Washington uh start making decisions to stop purchasing enslave people he’s he’s trying to not sell as many because he would be

breaking up families and we start to see private letters where he’s talking about um legislation being passed to lead to um gradual abolition of slavery uh but at the same time he is also writing about the difficulty the political difficulties of trying to push that in the early um Republic so we really do see him somewhat contradicted um in in in these viewpoints um eventually Washington does make arrangements in his will to free the enslaved people that he owns outright but again uh people have criticized him I think perhaps maybe rightly that he didn’t make those arrangements until after he had had the use of these humans for an entire lifetime and also not until after Martha Washton passed but I do think in a way it also shows Washington kind of struggling and maybe trying to set an example for the future and our posterity um that that were really uh ideals written into the Constitution itself of trying to continue to make a more perfect union um possibly I want to return to the comment about you said think a turning point would be Washington you know leading the Continental Army during the American Revolution right our Declaration of Independence says we’re all created equal with unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and it it wasn’t just Washington who recognized this disconnect between this principle of equality and slavery but certainly the enslaved men and women and people throughout the world we’ve discussed on other episodes of bridge from the past how African-Americans joined the American Revolution for the cause of you know freedom from the British you have writers like Thomas Payne pointing out this hypocrisy between saying you know the British are enslaving us they’re tyrants and we have slavery here in the United States so this is a tension that’s you know present sort of in the public space but also in a private space as well and you mentioned that Washington wrote about things in in private correspondence so could you talk a little bit more about why it would be private and why he wouldn’t have publicly said anything right so you know Washington at all points was was a leader of large groups and he understood U the difficulty he mean he was there right at the Constitutional Convention he was presiding he was uh really not a passive member of that group uh he was brokering uh conversations between different people trying to find compromise and he could see that the the topic and the issue of slavery itself uh was a difficult one for many to accept and others would be unwilling to accept a country without it um so I think Washington the shrewd politician understood the compromise that was necessary U Washington um in his personal life could also see the issues inherent in the system of slavery so he is writing to men like Lafayette talking about how can we

create systems to lead to abolition he is talking to family members as well um so I think what his private thoughts were um he knew wouldn’t necessarily be accepted in what they were trying to do and bring the country together in that early stage um so again I think he was kind of looking for the future and what could be done down the line I think that’s a really interesting point that there’s a you have what you you privately think and what you publicly can can work with so the founders are trying to create a union where everyone will Buy in and sort of the reality is there are places where slavery is so entrenched that to say we won’t have it is going to mean we don’t have a unanimous Union so um I think that’s a really interesting interesting point so what in our tour of the slave quarters which we’re going to replay for you later you can actually see like what the lives or what we think these men and women’s lives may have looked like is there anything else or any place else we can go at Mount Veron to learn about about this or online yes absolutely so our website mountvernon.org uh has extensive information about the enslaved population at Mount Vernon uh we have a wonderful database where you can search every individual that we know and then every document that references them it’s great for doing research if you need primary source material you can you can delve into it and actually see a lot of those letters I was talking about with with Washington and referencing different individuals um on our site as well we have a Museum that’s currently um going through an exhibition chain but we have our education center there’s a lot of information about the enslaved population there um and of course on our site while we we went to the slave quarters we also have a reconstructed cabin on our pioneer farm site on our uh recreative Farm site that uh shows what it was like on the outline Farm’s 8,000 acre Plantation uh system itself so there’s a lot of great information uh that you can you can get from visiting Mount Veron physically or virtually um we have an enslaved people of Mount Vernon tour that really delves into the stories of individuals and if you’re unable to go on that we also have a free brochure that you can do a self-guided tour um to cover that same information so there’s there’s really no lack of finding out more by visiting us physically or online okay you mentioned that um in our tour we talked about specific individuals that mount Vern has research such as bot Swain and martilla we talked about in our in our video are there other stories of specific enslaved individuals that we’re learning about or that we know about oh yeah we we have have tons of really good information about individuals um Mary Thompson who’s our research historian at Mount Vernon actually did a a 30-year research project uh and then just recently published a book a couple years back the only unavoidable subject of true regret and it’s about uh enslavement at Mount Vernon and from these stories she she found out so many interesting people um

one that I particularly find interesting is is that of Anderson um he was a man that we believe actually was one of the few brought from Africa over to North America ended up at Mount Vernon during the war for independence a British ship came up the pomac called The Savage and was was burning plantations all around uh Mal Veron the site itself was saved by Washington’s cousin lond Washington who gave supplies to the British to spare the house um when Washington found out he wrote a letter saying next time let him burn the burn the house down i’ rather it was left in ruin than you aided the enemy U but when the Savage was there 17 enslaved individuals took that as their opportunity to gain their freedom including Anderson um and unfortunately for him uh he was around at Yorktown where part of the surrender was to return U enslaved people who made it to the British back to the Americans so ended up back here at Mount Vernon um he was a Carpenter it was also a very skilled Hunter and he was one of the individuals who was freed uh under conditions in Washington’s will however at Mal Veron while there were 317 enslaved people George Washington himself only owned 123 the remainder were were either rented or were Dow slaves as part of Mrs Washington’s first husband’s estate who passed away so there was this interconnectivity there Sambo’s family were Dow slaves his his wife and his children because Virginia law said you followed the condition of the mother right so while was freed his family remained enslaved so actually used those hunting skills to trap for local hotels was able to raise enough money that eventually he was able to purchase the freedom of children and grandchildren uh from the custus estate oh my gosh so that’s a pretty interesting story that’s such a wonderful story that he was able to to free his family and make that happen gosh that’s that’s a movie right that’s a movie script right there the s that story I love it um I want to go back to um your comment that you had a researcher who spent 30 years trying to learn more about the lives of these men and women on the estate so I want to point out to you guys that’s that might be twice your lifetime that’s a long time 30 years so there’s still much to learn we’re still learning the story right is still evolving and then the title of her book The only unavoidable subject of her reget that is a quote that comes from Washington if I’m not mistaken and he’s writing about slavery being this is this is the regret he’s in his older you know he’s towards the end of his life and he’s saying you know this he’s reflecting and regretting that this has been a part of his life so I think that’s also you know worth pointing out that we have views and beliefs that can change over time and that’s you know certainly the story of History change over time but also a

stories of individuals as well um are there other things going on at the estate that are you know the story of uh the lives of these men and women are are we’re still learning about them other than online yeah absolutely we are we’re always um pushing um I think what’s interesting is as we’re doing research we’re we’re pushing out more to The Descendant community so those uh individuals today who can trace their lineage back to those who were enslaved at Mount Veron um we we’re trying to reach out a little bit more and coordinate with them U we have an archaeology progam uh project excuse me that’s going on currently at the cemetery site uh for uh formally enslaved individuals and U we’re we’re trying to locate and try to identify we’re only going down you know a couple couple inches to see where the soil was Disturbed and where these shafts are but by doing that we’re we’re hoping to be able to properly memorialize the individuals who are down there so it’s it’s a constant learning process in Mount Vernon I love that The Descendant Community is a part of this story right this is a story that it’s ongoing right and I think that that really takes me back to the Preamble of the Constitution which says one of the documents purposes is to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity right that’s posterity that’s our future that’s our children that’s you guys right so I think one of the best ways to do that to ensure that these principles of Liberty and equality are Faithfully applied is to make sure that our history is honest and inclusive and um to just recognize that these principles of Liberty and equality capital L capital e as as Gary mentioned before they’re not realized for many people for a long time but that doesn’t detract from the worthiness of the principle or the Constitution’s vision for a more excuse me a more perfect union like you said so the story of of of Bot Wayne and Marella that’s not your story that’s not my story that’s our story it’s the story of our country and it’s a story that you know we are continuing and one our posterity will take over from us so Jeremy thank you so much um for being here and a huge thank you to everyone at Mount buron for helping us continue this conversation absolutely so we have had some questions come in from our audience on YouTube if you have any questions please submit them uh throughout the day we be monitoring those chats um Emily schay a fifth grader in Gilbert Arizona and daughter of one of our staff members uh asked what did George Washington think of the Constitution and I think that’s a very good question on Constitution Day Absol do we have any any expertise in that here yeah so so George Washington of course uh presided over the Constitutional Convention and and I really think it’s important to note that his role was critical in it even becoming a thing

um there were several of the founders who said that you know it was his presence that carried the thing um and I think all of them understood that what they came up with was not a perfect document um and I think Washington understood that I think there was a lot of compromise to come out but Washington uh very much believed in the document that that was ultimately created um he he understood that it was his role to follow the will of the people to use this document as his guide and in fact when he received a copy of it um as he’s going through debates I mean you can see notes that he’s writing in the ledgers that’s like okay explicitly laying out this is what my role is as president so he he strongly believed in in following the document but he also understood that it was something that um was up to the people to continue to perfect over time I want to piggy back on that for just a second and point out the importance of annotating documents is George Washington annotated the Constitution I annotate all the time and you should be annotating too whenever you see a document or you see anything right English class it doesn’t matter where you are to make you make your thinking visible I think is really important and maybe one day historians will use that document in your annotations to figure out what Constitution Day was like in 20121 I think that’s a beautiful Vision I I agree with the exhortation to your documents even if it’s digital we’ll have ways to catalog those too um so we have um it sounds like Miss Gordon is getting her students to ask a lot of questions and there are probably too many questions for us to to to address in the next couple of minutes but you you were mentioning that we have documentation about how uh George Washington felt about slavery from his work so jamisha um jamisha asked how do you know exactly how George Washington felt about slavery and how do you find out who was in George Washington’s will and and you mentioned a little bit about the documentation there um but then also Danielle from Miss Gordon’s class is asking did George Washington view slavery SL having slaves as a way of of furthering his economic success so there are a lot of questions about George Washington’s views of slavery and it sounds like the Mount Vernon might have some resources for that right so what he absolutely definitively thought I mean we we don’t know right what we’re doing is we are interpreting the docu ments that we have the primary sources that he left behind um his letters his uh journal entries um what other people are describing the spaces as uh and his actions um so for us the interpretation is uh here’s a man who yes accepted the institution of slavery uh here is a man who yes used enslaved individuals to further his economic success he was a very wealthy man uh who was able to do a lot of things like serve in the Army as

the general commander-in Chief serve as president and that’s because of the work that was being done back in Mal Vernon but through these letters through these actions you can make the interpretation that he is struggling with this concept of owning other human beings and being lauded as the father of Liberty right the father of of Freedom um so we we see um in these letters specific specifically what he’s suggesting others should do and again ultimately his action his final action and his will was to free the enslave people that that he owned outright was that because he finally came to the realization that slavery was immoral and wrong was it to maybe protect his reputation for future Generations we don’t really know but again these are the interpretations that we’re able to do through those actions U that he left behind as for his will that is a public document you can read the whole thing on our website um they’re very easy to find uh these things Washington of course also knew that his will was going to be a very public document it was it was published and actually sold um afterwards and there are several historians who have also done um one of my favorites a good friend Peter Enrique’s has done a a book that really breaks down Washington’s will and all of its meanings and and future legacies Miss Gordon is letting us know that these are all high school students in her African Amer history class who are asking these questions so their high school students we don’t know their location maybe we’ll get that information but there’s there are a couple more questions in here especially from Jaylen who asks about the Constitution being written for the independence of all people but not enslaved people and um Deanna asks why didn’t George Washington abolish lafer when he became president if he didn’t If he if he understood it to not be a good thing and I think those goes we mentioned that a little bit is that there are arguments there there documentation for their private thoughts versus their public thoughts so can we speak to those questions from Jaylen and Dean a little bit about why weren’t people doing things if they knew it was wrong right so um you’re looking at a system of enslavement um that really got its start um hundred 150 years plus before George Washington was born and this system really um commodified human beings it tried to take away their Humanity to make them something that they could the these people could use for profit uh for labor Etc so when the founders are saying things like all men are created equal the sad sad reality is they they just didn’t view these people of African descent really as equal people uh they viewed them as as a commodity and that again hundreds of years of laws that were passed that put this system into place um but to the second part of the question again might want to rehash it again but I believe it was you know why didn’t Washington push

to abolish slavery as he’s he’s starting to see uh the difficulties and and the real truth and reality is we wouldn’t have a United States of America if that had been the push um even at the Constitution I I don’t think States like Georgia South Carolina North Carolina probably even Virginia and even New York to an extent would have signed on to a constitution that that did not guarantee uh the this property as they as they saw it as part of it so Washington that’s again why a lot of his correspondence about the gradual abolition was in private correspondence because if he had if he had been uh public it probably would have created some political uh difficulties but then again uh somebody of Washington stature maybe if he had we we might be having a different conversation unfortunately that’s one of those things we’ll never know we’ll never know well I want to thank you both so much and I especially want to thank um Miss Gordon’s class in Florence South Carolina thank you for all your wonderful questions to Mary and Jeremy from Mount Vernon so as we mentioned Mary and Jeremy had a wonderful conversation on site at Mount Vernon you can stay tuned to watch that episode of bridge from the past uh and we would love for you to join us again after that episode at 11:40 a.m. eastern to talk with uh br’s Master teacher Victor Harris out in Ohio another state that has a long American history and history of of of uh of many issues uh so Liz Evans our program manager will be talking with him at 1140 a.m. eastern again remember you can bring all your questions to us through social channels and we would love to see you there so stay tuned throughout the day thanks guys hi everybody welcome back to another episode of bridge from the past art across US History I’m I’m your host Mary and as you can probably see today we are not using a two-dimensional image to jump into the past but we’re using a place I am on location at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in Alexandria Virginia this Constitution Day we are shining a light on founding principles of Liberty and equality right these beautiful founding principles at the core of our nation beautiful like this Garden Mount Vernon is a fascinating place to think about these ideas on the one one hand it’s the home of the father of our country our first president on the other hand slavery was deeply ingrained in Washington’s World slavery at Mount Vernon is a complex story that challenges us to think about our nation’s history as both positive and negative if we’re talking about founding principles of Liberty and equality we have to talk about slavery how can visiting places like Mount Vernon help us grapple with this complex story I’m delighted to be joined by Jeremy Ray Mount werner’s director of interpretation to think about these questions Jeremy thank you so much for

being with us today thank you so much for having me absolutely so as you watch this video think of questions you’d like to ask Jeremy and me we’ll be bringing him back on Constitution Day to look at all of your questions and answer them live you can follow the link below to submit questions and you’ll receive a variety of resources leading up to Constitution Day let’s take a look at the greenhouse slave quarters on the other side of this building come with us so Jeremy can you Orient us so where are we on Mount Vernon yes excellent question so Mount Vernon itself as a property was five separate Farms on 8,000 acres of land wow and we are here at the mansion house farm right one of those five farms and just right behind the camera off to the side is the mansion house itself we are on the north side of that here at the greenhouse slave quarters right so on the other side of this building is is the upper Garden it’s a big big beautiful garden space uh that Washington would entertain guess at but of course on the other side of that other side of that brick structure uh was the home of around uh 45 50 enslaved human beings that’s really interesting so the garden and the Mansion are on the other side of us so this area here this is not what visitors would see if they came to the estate in Washington’s time so Washington was the landscape architect of the grounds and he designed it to have a Leisure space for entertainment uh the Bowling Green the Mansion the view of the river the gardens right uh and this is a space where uh very wealthy High Society individuals visiting the Washingtons would entertain themselves with walks and discussions uh the garden here itself on the other side of this building is large and beautiful with a big centerpiece that is the greenhouse where you would see tropical plants a very impressive space but marking off the boundary of that space was were these living quarters on the other side of uh the building itself were the living spaces for enslaved men women and children there were about 90 enslaved people here at the mansion house farm and a good proportion of them lived in these Barrack like structures over here so it was not typical for guests to come over to this space but we have a lot of our written descriptions of what life was like and the living conditions in these spaces from visitors who came over and wrote down what they saw so when we think about um on bridge from the past we think about using your observation to form questions so I see you know this is a brick building and there’s doors there’s you know glass windows is this typical of a structure for where enslaved people would live uh so this is very atypical uh for enslaved structures but even here at Mount Vernon uh as I mentioned before Mount Vernon was five Farms on 8,000 acres of land and on those outling Farms what the typical structures were were wooden uh huts or or buildings or enslave people to live in uh even here at the mansion house Farm uh family units it was typical to

live in a wooden structure we know that botne and martilla uh and their children lived in a wooden cabin structure closer to the Westgate this structure is more of your military style barracks and it actually was constructed in the 1790s and it replaced a larger multi-story wooden structure that’s about right here where we are are standing um so brick structures with the fireplaces like this were fairly atypical okay and it’s divided between a men’s side and a women’s side so were these people not living with their families or we’re just not sure right so as far as living with their families Washington uh wanted his enslaved people to live where they worked um so for example behind us uh is the blacksmith shop uh Nat and George were enslaved blacksmith they more more than likely lived here uh in these quarters uh where their wives Lucy and Lydia actually lived on the outlying farms because they were working uh as field hands in those spaces U so they they were separated out the only time that they could see each other was on Sundays their day off uh or if they would walk through the night to see them uh during the night um Washington called this habit night walking he absolutely despised it because he felt it made the enslaved people unproductive uh but for the enslaved Community this was an intentional decision to take control over their lives to see their family to see the ones uh that they love now as for the men’s and women’s bunk that’s actually a decision that our curatorial staff here has made to highlight the differences in the lives of enslaved men and enslaved women we actually don’t know if it was uh separated men’s bunk women’s bunk or uh if if it was uh mixed uh between the two I want to go back to your the idea of being separated from your family and this idea of night walking so I think that just that that example is such a powerful reminder of you making a decision for yourself and like the idea of what it must have been like to not be able to be with your family I think if you just sort of stop and think about that for a second it’s really powerful really powerful but you mentioned that your staff has decided to display it as men and women to highlight what they did so I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the artifacts in the room so one thing that really draws my attention when I go into the men’s side is the it looks like a trap made out of Twigs or something like that could you talk a little bit about that yeah that’s exactly what it is it was it was a trap for catching animals um again the enslaved population here Works sun up to sun down Monday through Saturday they had Sundays off uh that time time was their time most spent it uh spending that time with their family uh getting caught up in other work on the outlying

uh excuse me on their their garden plots uh to grow additional food uh for themselves and others would actually go into the wooded spaces in between uh the farms and would trap or go fishing and whatever they caught sometimes foul Birds fish uh they could even sell that to to George Washington uh if they caught anyone poaching uh so illegally hunting on Washington’s land they could confiscate the weapons and then sell those back to George Washington as well um so that trap is kind of a a typical homemade trap for for catching animals uh on their day off okay and that sort of brings me into the other thing that I notic which is the food so you have you know the fish you can see you know the game hanging by the fireplace and you have these bags of with George Washington’s initials so is that they’re supplementing their diet with the food that they grow and that they trap their on their own correct yeah so Washington is required to provide food for the enslaved population and it’s not much uh we would look at it as as kind of mirror subsistence we have it set up there a bowl of a a little bit of cornmeal uh and then a couple fish about 5 to eight ounces of a protein a quart of cornmeal a day so Washington dispensed that in big large bags with his initials on it that was about a month supply of the cornmeal then they had to divide that up uh so yes a lot of that trapping uh what they’re growing in in garden plots is supplementing their diet um going fishing and things like that okay and on the women’s side I’m struck by the laundry looks like laundry hanging so I’m assuming that was a large part of their tasks here at mansion house right so Washington provided one set of summer clothing one set of winter clothing a year uh and the enslaved people had to maintain that uh do repairs and of course have to to keep it clean so it’s a constant process process is they’re keeping their clothing uh clean you know they go and work Sun up the sun down those evenings are a time where they’re taking care of themselves and their family that’s another again just to think about like humanizing this that you have the same foods that you’re allotted and the same clothing it’s just to to stop and think about what that means it’s a very small thing but I think it’s also very powerful and the other thing that I think is striking in the women’s quarters is the look like a child’s match on the floor which for me as a mom of a little one is again driving home that there are children being born into this world and what is that experience like for them here or what do we know about that yeah well the the the story of enslaved children is is um very tough one to to hear because uh going back to the 17th century Virginia law stated that the child of an enslaved woman uh was also enslaved and belonged to their master or enslaver so you’re looking at a system where children are born into this concept of being a commodity right

being this thing that is eventually going to uh be for the use of another person to uh bring them U profit and and and goods to sell right um so you talked about that little mattress that’s on the ground we actually have a writing of that from a a Polish visitor who came to Mount Vernon Julian uh chevit uh who said that the enslaved people slept on uh cots that were lower than what the lowliest a peasant would sleep on in Europe the children slept on a mean pallet on the floor so that’s kind of the description of you know these little bed rolls or just some straw and hay or something that was laid out with blankets that that the children were sleeping on close to her family those um CS uh I think they wrote that there were multiple adults sleeping uh to them whether or not those those were family members or just individuals needing a bed space we’re we’re not entirely sure so we’ve been talking about the structure and the things inside it and what we can see and what that might mean for the men women and children who lived here but what what doesn’t this building and these the artifacts inside it what doesn’t it tell us right and that’s a great question um because a lot of our guests come here to Mount Vernon and they see a brick structure with with Windows and things and we hear this comment fairly often oh this isn’t that bad right and they’re just looking again at the material structure itself they think well this probably affords a warm space and provides some sort of protection but that ignores the fact that enslavement itself is a system that only works through fear and dehumanization while it may have a fireplace and it may be made of brick we don’t know how many people are actually in this space we do know that again children are sleeping on pallets on the floor multiple adults into a bunk and another thing to remember is that the only way you can compel another human being to do work against their will is for them to fear something fear of physical abuse punishment fear that at any point in time they or one of their family members could be sold away and never seen again um while there may be doors on these structures it does not prevent the fear that Society has been weaponized to a point to maintain the system of enslavement at any point in time an overseer or somebody could come into this room check and see what’s going on remove a person arbitrarily decide you know they’re going to be punished uh Washington could decide take them out they’ve run away way I’m selling them right so this constant idea of fear is not present when looking at this brick structure right and it’s

really interesting so we have looked at in past episodes when we start with a painting or we start with a cartoon we can make observations we can ask questions and the more you think about it and the more you probe deeper the more you realize ah these people didn’t you know have the Privacy they didn’t get to see or spend as much time with their family so it’s really um it’s almost like the longer you sit and think about it the more you you learn the more questions that you have so I am going to throw it back to you guys so we have we’ve covered a lot of ground in our conversation so Jeremy thank you so much and be sure to send us your questions we’ll be back on Constitution Day live to talk with you about the questions that you have about how we can talk about a system like slavery and still talk about founding principles of Liberty inequality these are really difficult questions and it’s a really hard conversation but it’s one that we definitely need to have so thank you again be sure to submit your questions through the link below and follow us on social media so you get all of the good information about Constitution Day live thanks guys take care welcome back to br’s Constitution Day live with me Rachel Davidson humph director of Outreach here in this segment we’re we’re traveling across the country to speak with Educators about how they’re teaching and learning Liberty and equality our first segment is with Bri’s own Regional director regional manager of programs Liz Evans coming to us from Phoenix Arizona and she’ll be joined by B Master teacher Victor Harris from Ohio we look forward to hearing your questions so please let us know in the chat what you’d like to learn about and hear throughout the day and we’ll see you again soon our Bell is going to ring in a minute hello everybody Welcome to teaching history and Civics today I am Elizabeth Evans the regional programs manager here at the Bill of Rights Institute and I’m so excited to be joined today by Bri Master teacher Victor Harris who teaches in Cincinnati Ohio and whose Bell is about to ring so we might be a little bit interrupted so Victor I’m going to let you introduce yourself tell us a little bit about your school and what you teach all right my name is Victor Harris um I teach at Sycamore Junior High School I teach e8th grade American history um Sycamore is a

suburban community in Cincinnati Ohio um this is this would be my 32nd year teaching 33rd year teaching so I’ve been teaching for 33 years this will be my 33 year teaching um and I teach American history and love it yay that is amazing shout out to all the eighth grade civics teachers in America Victor our theme is liberty and equality so what does a liberty and equality mean to you um well Liberty and we talk about this in kind of class all the time excuse me liberty is obviously freedom and you know what does that freedom entail and that freedom entails you know being a responsible citizen it entails being an active participant in your Society it uh means being a positive CP uh participant in your society and I think equality and I tell the kids equality to me always means opportunity that everybody has an equal chance and um that we all have the opportunity and the chance to do whatever we have the gifts um that will allow us to do I love that that’s I’ve never thought about it that way equality as opportunity I’m G to have to write that down when we’re done so when you talk about that then with your students what does liberty and equality mean in your classroom and to your students well and I teach a gr so I think that’s a very important developmental area for kids you know when you have seniors you have grown kids in that classroom when you have Junior High kids you have kids who are just trying to feel out who they are and what they and what they’re about so one of the things we talk about is with that in my classroom a lot of that freedom comes with a lot of the responsibility you know I’m going to treat you you’re not lining up in the hallways anymore and doing things like that you’re being treated as a young adult in the classroom um but with that you know you do have there are some expectations there are some behavioral expectations there are some academic expectations that come with that so we try to do that um I try to equip them with those tools I tell them a lot of my job is to get them ready for the high school to be successful students in high school so I try to equip them with those tools to figure out what they want to do and how they want to go about achieving that when they get up to the high school and that’s a middle school is a a unique opportunity because they’re coming from elementary school and for a lot of students this is the first time they’ve had a social studies class as a whole I mean they do learn it in elementary but it’s a little bit different um so we we work with students right we work with Educators and when we look at Liberty and equality in America what is what are you hopeful for as we kind of move forward well and everyone talks about how Americans how partisan America has become and a lot of that is I I think we’ve forgotten how to uh politely

disagree with each other um I think civil discourse is something that needs to come back I think um partisanship is not bad in a way because it does show that there are certain beliefs that maybe each side needs to look at and ideas that each side of the political Spectrum need to look at but we need to be able to discuss those things and we need to be able to come up with solutions for those problems instead of me just constantly Brown brow beating this one issue okay what how am I going to fix this issue how am I going to make this better not for me not that it benefits me particularly but that it benefits everybody in our society um because you know like it or not we’re all in this together and I think our attitude towards that has to be that we’re in this together and we’re in this to make this a better place for all of us us and like they said in in the Constitution for posterity for our future generations and I think we forget that we’ve become a very shortsighted society and I think we forget that this is for people who aren’t here yet and so is that something with your students that you model is is kind of the you know looking at I I notice a problem I want to fix it and here’s how I go about doing that because again graders I mean they’re their own special entity right they’re not Elementary they’re not high school they’re trying to kind of figure things out and so you’re in a unique position to model that for them what does that look like well and I think you know part of in Ohio part of one of the citizen one of the strands to our social studies uh curriculum is citizenship teaching kids what it means to be a citizen so and I tried to tell him said you know in four years you guys are eligible voters what are you voting for who are you voting for why are you voting for that particular person you know so I think they need to start to learn those skills if there are things in school that they don’t like there’s a rule they don’t like I said okay there are constructive ways you can look at that rule and figure out why that rule is in place and maybe do something to change that rule I said so your your um citizenship your civilization your Society is as small or as large as you can make it so we’ll have kids who come and they say excuse me Mr Harris we want to talk about this I say well here’s the good way to do this and here’s a way to go over that and then we’ll have kids who who take a much more global view and they’re going out and they’re raising money for foundations or they’re signing petitions for you know Equal justice initiatives and things like that so it’s it’s a wide spectrum in that group and that’s the fun thing about that group is you know they can make it a very personal thing a very personal uh event here in school or they can make that a global EV event so it’s really neat to see both of those perspectives and that’s a really cool thing because I think often times especially with middle school they think well I can’t vote yet I can’t do anything as a citizen but you just gave us so many examples of you can actually

be a really active citizen prior to voting right so if if a middle school teacher out there wanted to kind of get started with this and looking at the lens of Liberty and equality through citizenship do you have any advice I’m kind of putting you on the spot here oh no that’s right well first of all Bill of Rights Institute has a lot of really great stuff on their website a lot of great resources and things like that the webinars and the excuse me and the podcasts that pop up are really they do a lot of you know they make you reflect and think about things that you can use in your classroom um I think that one of the things is to encourage your the kids in your classroom to talk about social issues I know a lot of teachers like to stay way because they don’t want to be controversial and things like that but I think if if kids are taught to to politely disagree with each other okay that’s how we make things change if we’re so entrenched in this is right I’m right and you’re wrong then we’re never going to get anything changed and so I think that has to start at that Junior High Middle School level so that by the time kids are in high school they they’re they’re used to saying well but here’s what I think and here’s the facts that I have to back that up and also understanding that when you engage in a dialogue you and I might be engaged in a dialogue where we disagree on something but even listening to each other and understanding Victor I hear what you’re saying and here’s why I disagree with it not just here’s what I think right but also having that and practicing that dialogue with students is so big and important right and and even what you just said is you know I hear you and I dis dis agree instead of I hear you and here’s where you’re wrong because as soon as you tell that other person they’re wrong they automatically Retreat back and then you’re not going to get anywhere in that so you know saying that I I I hear you and here’s my view on that and this is where you and I can disagree on that and maybe at some point we can come to some kind of common ground on a particular issue yes awesome well Victor thank you so much this has been such a great 10 minutes of my day happy Constitution Day to you and your students and thank you for what you do for civic education what you do as a BRI Master teacher everyone stay tuned because coming up at the top of the hour we have another live segment with br’s own Kirk Higgins and Anastasia Bowden from the Pacific Legal fund doing a close read thank you everybody and happy Constitution Day thank you see everybody thank you so much for joining us for Bill of Rights institute’s Constitution Day live programming we have been building up our YouTube and video programming for the past few years we’re so proud to be able to offer a variety of shows throughout the week throughout the month to reach students teachers and the history Enthusiast if

you have a favorite show or episode we’ love to hear from you we know that there are students in classrooms across the country who are using our homework Heth videos our bridge to the past all of our programming in the classroom so we’d love to hear what you’re enjoying we’ve chosen a few videos to show that really uh speak about today for Constitution Day Life those are going to play now and then don’t forget to get back with us at 12 Eastern n Pacific for our live conversation uh close read with Kirk Higgins and Anastasia Bowden from Pacific Legal front we’ll see you there during the first Congress of 1789 representative James Madison was the driving force behind the Bill of Rights Madison believed that the new consti tion had carefully limited powers and was not the main threat to individual rights and Liberties he was particularly concerned that the state governments would violate rights and be tyrannical therefore he wanted to curtail the states with a Bill of Rights however members of Congress refused to restrict the powers of the state government and argued that individuals in the states were already protected by the state constitutions and bills of Rights Madison lost that debate and the Bill of Rights applied to the national government the states ratified the first 10 amendments this that states could theoretically pass laws that violated Provisions set in the Bill of Rights so was this the best system or should the Bill of Rights be applied or Incorporated to protect fundamental rights at the state level today we discuss the Constitutional interpretation of [Music] incorporation in 1868 the 14th amendment was ratified and aimed to protect the rights of African-Americans who are forever freed by the 13th Amendment the 14th amendment was primarily aimed at the states because during Reconstruction The Radical Republicans in Congress were particularly interested in protecting freed people from having States violate their rights these include black citizenship guaranteed privileges and immunities equal protection of the law and due process of the law the Clause of which reads nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law this was important as over time the Supreme Court used this due process clause to assert that the 14th Amendment could apply the Bill of Rights to the states in what was called the incorporation Doctrine the Supreme Court enforced this despite the fact that the fifth Clause of the Amendment states that Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article this development of the incorporation Doctrine would gradually become an integral part of Supreme Court decisions over the next 100 years the first major case to accept the incorporation Doctrine came in the 1925 git llo versus New York ruling as the majority upheld freedom of speech and press stating that they are quote among the fundamental personal rights and Liberties protected by the due process

clause of the 14th Amendment from impairment by the states the court soon followed this decision with the 1931 ni versus Minnesota ruling which prevented prior restraint on the press and Publishing material the court emphas the importance of the statute and ruled that it transcended local interests stating it is no longer open to doubt that the liberty of the press is safeguarded by due process clause of the 14th Amendment from Invasion by state action later during 1947’s Adamson versus people of the State of California case Justice Hugo L black would transform the acceptance of incorporation in the 1960s and Beyond in his scaling descent black wrote that the 14th Amendment provided a total Incorporation of the Bill of Rights as they were fundamental rights Felix Frankfurter and the rest of the Court resisted Justice Black’s total incorporation however the court did begin to increasingly apply selective incorporation in several cases in later cases related to the rights of the accused the court has often Incorporated the Bill of Rights in favor of the plaintiff these include Matt V Ohio in 1961 which dealt with warrantless searches additional seminal cases of incorporation deal with religious establishment and schools such as Everson V Board of Education in 1947 and angle V vital in 1962 the incorporation of the Bill of Rights has been a controversial Doctrine throughout the 20th and 21st century different cases have Incorporated different amendments individually during that span to varying opinions as of 2020 six amendments from the Bill of Rights have been at least partially Incorporated consider this does the incorporation Doctrine pit the principle of fundamental rights against the principle of federalism thanks for joining us thank you guys for watching make sure you like And subscribe and comment down below the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirm and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized and though these protections of the Fourth Amendment were widely accepted they only applied to the national government the 14th Amendment adopted after the Civil War imposed restrictions on state governments that Amendment says in part that no state shall deprive any person of due process over time the Supreme Court applied the protections of the Bill of Rights to state governments on an amendment by Amendment basis through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment this process of applying the Bill of Rights to state governments is known as incorporation but is this constitutional should the Bill of Rights apply only to the federal government to protect individual liberties or to state governments as well and what rights do

individuals have against illegal seizures at the state level under the Fourth Amendment this is the case of map versus Ohio [Music] in 1957 Dolly map was a 33-year-old woman living in Cleveland Ohio rumored to have ties to organized crime an informant told police that she may have been hiding a local racketeer wanted for illegal gambling and for questioning in connection with a recent bombing on May 23rd 1957 seven police officers broke into her home without a search warrant the officers did not find the alleged fugitive or any gambling equipment however they did find obscene pictures and books which were illegal in Ohio at the time map was arrested convicted of possessing obscene material and imprisoned map appealed her case to the Ohio state supreme court which affirmed the conviction the court found the lack of a warrant did not invalidate map’s conviction as Ohio courts were allowed to admit unlawfully seized evidence in criminal trials map’s attorney Alexander Kars appealed to the United States Supreme Court arguing that map’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated since they should be incorporated at the state level via the 14th amendments due process clause so how would the Supreme Court rule would the illicit material found in map’s apartment hold up at the highest level in a 6 to3 decision the US Supreme Court held that evidence obtained in violation of the fourth amendment’s prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures was inadmissible in state courts map was set free the court ultimately relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to conclude that the federal exclusionary rule was applicable to the states through the incorporation Doctrine chief justice Tom Clark wrote for the majority stating the criminal goes free if he must but it is the law that sets him free nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its Failure to observe its own laws or Worse its disregard of the charter of its own existence the burden was now on police to conduct legal searches to find evidence or it would be excluded and the accused would go free the three dissenting judges rejected the incorporation Doctrine and thus rejected the extension of the exclusionary rule to the states Justice harand wrote for the dissent emphasizing that his decision was rooted in the idea that since problems of criminal law enforcement vary from state to state the Federal ederal government should limit setting Universal standards within them Jus as harand wrote the preservation of a proper balance between state and federal responsibility in the administration of Criminal Justice demands patience on the part of those who might like to see things move faster among the states in this respect problems of criminal law enforcement

vary widely from state to state map versus Ohio set precedent in the 1960s for the Supreme Court to incorporate other procedural protections to criminal defendants that protected the rights of the accused such as Gideon versus way in 1963 the law of search and seizure continues to develop decades after Matt ver Ohio for example courts today grapple with new issues relating to search and seizure in the digital age the case also helped strengthen the expansion of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights to States incorporation remains a hotly debated issue amongst legal Scholars as it relates to the principles of federalism and principles of legal interpretation when will incorporation be the subject of another major Supreme Court case this was the case of map versus Ohio thanks so much for watching guys be sure to like And subscribe and comment below welcome back to the Bill of Rights institute’s Constitution Day live programming we’re here in the studio in Arlington Virginia with a very special guest um a couple of weeks ago Anastasia Bowden and Kirk Higgins our director of concrete uh content met together to talk about the importance of the Constitution and students today so we are here to continue that conversation Anastasia welcome Kirk take it away absolutely well I’m excited to be back and Anastasia who is a senior attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation thank you for joining me again pleasure to be here awesome well we are both I know very excited that it’s Constitution Day and excited to talk about the Constitution so last time when we had our conversation we really talked about the ninth and 14th amendments specifically and sort of the Constitution broadly um but you talked about this idea of the presumption of Liberty which I thought was really interesting could you tell me again kind of what is that presumption of Liberty um and and why is it important yeah well the importance of the 14th Amendment cannot be understated when it comes to the Constitution because it dramatically changed the organization of the government and its relationship to individuals so it it what it did was it gave the federal government much more power in securing our rights and protecting our rights from abuse by the state governments and that’s because it recognized the the horres that have been done prior to the Civil War and that in reality it wasn’t enough just to have protections from the federal government and to trust the state governments to protect our rights really we needed to set that floor for rights um at the federal level and ensure that Congress had power to to protect us from from abuses by the states and so what the 14th Amendment

does among other things it’s one of our longest amendments is it protects us from uh it secures us in our individual rights and it gives us equality before the law so everybody is equal and entitled to their individual rights okay and and those rights cannot be taken away without due process of law seems simple enough but what are those rights what does that even mean and what a lot of people do is they go and they open up the Constitution and they look at the list of the Bill of Rights and they say okay those are the rights that were guaranteed but what they forget is that there’s a little thing called the Ninth Amendment and it says that even though the Constitution lays out some rights that’s just a flavor of our rights that’s just the beginning and that list should not be considered exhaustive we have unenumerated rights and those rights are unlimited really there’s not just various specific rights we have Liberty and anytime the government’s going to take that Liberty away it’s the government’s job to justify that taking away to us it’s not the individual’s job to justify that we have that Liberty Liberty is just presumed and so we call that the presumption of Liberty and uh it’s this really expansive notion of Liberty that’s unique to uh America and I think makes our constitution great yeah see this I I think that’s incredible and and that idea that you know it’s assumed that we have Liberty unless there’s a relatively important reason to take it away I think gets at the heart of sort of the theme that we’ve been talking about today of Liberty and equality you mentioned both of those um just now thinking about equality before the law um which again is one of the reasons I like think think about the Constitution if you if you think about in the abstract at least to me it’s kind of funny we have this written document that we have a day that we celebrate right it’s kind of a kind of an odd thing but it’s so important to get at exactly what what you were talking about and um I guess my question just following on that and thinking about your work as as a you know a constitutional lawyer um sort of what what how is it that understanding these things can help us continue to think about these ideas of Liberty and equality um and and what sort of is our role as Citizens trying to advance those things especially when it’s it’s complicated right I mean even the word presumption of Liberty is a pretty complex thing um how how should we be thinking about all that today yeah you know these concepts are not just abstract things esoteric things that don’t matter they really have a significant impact on our daily life so I encounter people all the time who are telling me that they just want to be doing something ordinary and yet the government is saying uh it’s getting that presumption of Liberty exactly back backwards it’s creating a permission society as some have said where it’s assuming that if it’s not if the thing that people want to do is not explicitly allowed then it’s forbidden and that gets it wrong because what the Constitution says is if it’s not forbidden then it’s allowed so to take two concrete examples I was approached by a mobile barber in Utah this was a

guy who wanted to open up what’s basically a food truck but a barber shop it’s just a mobile Barber and he goes and Parks different places and you can walk in and and get a haircut and he went to the City in Utah and he said hey I’m willing to pay all the proper fees you know there’s a business license fee and what have you I’ll abide by all the normal regulations that apply to barber shops just tell me what I need to do and the city said well we don’t have anything in our city code explicitly allowing mobile barber shops so that means that it’s forbidden and that just gets it completely wrong this is supposed to be a society where people can innovate freely and so long as we are exercising our Liberty in a way that doesn’t harm anyone it’s allowed and so long as there’s no law on the book that’s been properly enacted that has a legitimate reason for being there we get to exercise our Liberty so these are really important things and uh just one more concrete example to sort of put it into practical terms recently we saw that people have been creating what’s called lab grown meat so this is meat that’s genetically identical to meat from an animal but it doesn’t require killing any animals it can be genetically created uh in a lab and it’s a very humane way to create protein to feed people it’s it’s a amazing Innovation and the FDA said well you can’t bring this to Mark yet because we don’t have any framework again explicitly allowing it and if you think about that you think you can see how subverting the presumption of Liberty really does harm to American values of innovation entrepreneurship opportunity creation um when you get rid of the presumption of Liberty you get rid of the thing that has really made America great and has made America a place where people come to to make something of themselves to go from Rags to Riches to be entrepreneurs to to take a chance at doing something great and so these are not just abstract Concepts they really have a practical impact on our lives and the products that are available to us and people’s ability to earn a living and pursue the American dream yeah absolutely and I think those examples are fascinating too because it shows just how complex these questions are and that every time a new question comes up every time there’s something sort of new developing in society we’ve got to think through how the Constitution is going to apply to this uh where it is that Liberty may be impeded upon or what that right balance is um and that’s sort of a debate between legislates and also um in courts and laws and trying to figure out you know through that sort of dialogue process that sort of big conversation that we’re all a part of um in one of those cases I know that both you and I were we’re excited to talk about um and to think about is mahoi versus BL um which was just ruled this spring um and I know it’s one that’s directly relevant to students because it it dealt with a student uh in Pennsylvania um I was wondering if you just say briefly kind of what were the facts of that case and I guess why has it captured our attention so much yeah I love this case because not all cases at the Supreme Court are exciting actually a lot of them are quite dull and a lot of them don’t seem to impact our everyday lives

but this is the case of the curse and cheerleader so it’s a little bit more fun and you can already see how it’s going to be impacting students because it has to do with an ordinary high school student and what happened was on one fateful day uh this minor who is unnamed in the lawsuit because she was a minor she did not make the varsity cheer team and she was not happy about that and on the same day she found out that she also didn’t make her club soccer team so this was a really bad day for for this minor and so she did what I think uh many kids do nowadays and she went onto social media to Snapchat and she posted a little video with some Choice words about school and soccer and cheerleading they were not very nice and I won’t repeat them here and what happened was uh was that one of the students one of the people on the cheerleading team saw that message they screenshotted it she that that young woman showed her mom who was the coach of the cheerleading team and eventually what ended up happening is the school suspended uh the Cur and cheerleader from the cheerleading team for the remainder of the year and she sued she took the con ution and she said hey I have a right to exercise free speech and you can’t punish me because of that free speech and the question at the Supreme Court was do schools have the ability to punish students for speech that they exercise off campus there was already a bunch of Supreme Court president about uh what the limits are when the school’s trying to punish you for speech on campus and the question was can the can the school also punish you if you’re talking and cursing off campus and Justice Brier wrote in an 81 opinion maybe it’s a very Justice Brier opinion for anybody who follows the court he he didn’t want to go too far he said well there might be certain circumstances that you can imagine where the speech is so harmful or dangerous it’s a threat to the school or it involves cheating on exams or it’s something where there’s a direct relevancy to the school where the school can punish you but this isn’t it this is you know a student who’s just exercising her free speech and yeah the school doesn’t like it but the role of the school is not to protect students from offensive speech it’s to protect students uh against not hearing offensive speech it’s to protect their speech and to encourage debate and sort of divisive ideas and so uh ultimately Justice Brier said um she shouldn’t have been suspended yeah I I just I find it fascina I mean I think it’s an interesting question and I love this idea that you know a swearing frustrated student um just having a bad day is the one that’s helping Advance Free Speech rights um and just to Probe on the case a little bit more I I think it’s interesting sometimes I think as students I know I’ve I’ve studied briefly a lot of Supreme Court cases um but it’s fascinating to me that that how technical these things can get and just as an example of that um what it means to be on campus I think is a fascinating

question especially today as we’re thinking about hey like you know is campus remote learning you know now that we’re in covid we’re broadcasting this remotely like you know is it if you are sitting at home does that necessarily mean um is that a part of campus now does it physically mean at school um I know of course in famous cases like morsy Frederick and others that they have taken this kind of question up but um I guess how is it when the Supreme Court gets a question like that in something so seemingly simple as like well you’re either on campus or not on campus um you know how how do how do they go about thinking through some of those complex questions I mean or how do you as an attorney begin to even begin to think about something something like that yeah that’s a great question because there have been all of these changes obviously since the Constitution was enacted technology is drastically different the world looks differently but that causes a lot of people to say well the Constitution just isn’t relevant anymore and that’s not true the facts may change technology may change but the concepts don’t change and so I think we can trust in the principles and apply them to new facts and that can be difficult and it can be messy but it’s not a reason to throw out the principles it’s not a reason to say that the text doesn’t matter anymore in fact those enduring principles matter now more than ever because the world is so complicated and uh interwoven and uh the government has grown in size and you know this is a reason to go back to those principles and revisit them so it’s kind of funny in mahoi itself you see uh justice Thomas was the Lone denter and he’s going back and he’s looking at uh the practices at the time uh the Constitution was enacted and seeing what what schools could do to students back then that’s one way of interpreting the Constitution um you know he gets into debate with Justice Gorsuch even though Justice Gorsuch is also a originalist um so it just goes to show that constitutional interpretation uh is complicated even people with the same ideology might come out to different uh outcomes and uh that’s part of like you said this this debate this interchange between the legislature and the court but it is the Court’s duty to hold the legisl nature to the terms of the Constitution and so people really resent this debate sometimes they see the judges as overstepping or getting too involved in our everyday lives but actually it makes perfect sense that if you’re going to have a constitution uh there has to be somebody in charge with enforcing it and that’s what we expect the courts to do and so this is a perfectly legitimate Endeavor and I find it to be an endlessly fascinating Endeavor and uh that’s why I I try to go to court and and help solve these debates absolutely you said said two things that speak right to my heart first is principles it’s something that we think a lot about here at the Bill of Rights Institute um in our constitution today we kind of opened and reflecting on these principles and and I think your comments really speak to that idea that look you know even when imperfectly applied I mean even when it’s really hard to understand how they are applied right the Supreme Court Justices are all brilliant individuals top of their field really bright legal Scholars and they disagree over these things I mean they are huge complex questions um but the

idea that we’re sort of invited into that dialogue um I think is really important and the idea that you know as things change over time that we can have this sort of civil deliberative conversational process um I think is really important and that it’s not you know just asking questions just disagreeing is not bad in fact not only is it not bad it’s a part of the process it’s a necessary part of the process um so speaking my language because uh as you know I co-host a podcast called dist about Supreme Court descents and you know we find descent so important to this Society because they are a way to encourage debate in a way that some of the most heated issues are debated by the most Brilliant Minds and we get insight into it all and it’s such a civil process it shows you that it’s perfectly okay to disagree with somebody and to do it in a respectful Manner and what you get out of that dialogue is something better you get better reasoned arguments by that dialogue because somebody is picking out the flaws in your argument and that’s not a bad thing that’s a good thing that makes that gives you an opportunity to make your arguments stronger and you you see the judges going back and forth in the law evolving and uh I think it just reiterates like you said how important descent and dialogue is to our country absolutely well Anastasia thank you so much I’m not going to welcome in my colleague Rachel uh to see if we have any questions from our viewers who are out there hopefully tuning in yeah well we have some questions come in in advance um you mentioned a little bit about how cases get to the suem court and not all of them are particularly exciting and I think there is a big misconception that all the cases that come before The Supreme Court are quote landmark cases because those are the only cases that students end up hearing about right so can you tell us a little bit just for all of our edification just how does that process work what gets to the Supreme Court and then what makes something Landmark versus not landmarked yeah the funny thing about all of that is that even so-called Landmark decisions are very often in incremental the Supreme Court moves incrementally it doesn’t like to just you know have a complete upheaval of everything and and flip our society on its head it likes to move incrementally so even some of the biggest wins for litigants are just small it’s litigation the Supreme Court is very strategic and it’s about pushing the envelope little by little to get to a certain place but yeah how does a case get to the Supreme Court it’s funny a lot of people think I’m just going to take my case to the Supreme Court you know I’m so angry I want to get there and I want to have the justices rule on it but actually nobody well very few cases I should say are guaranteed a spot at the Supreme Court most of their cases are discretionary and in fact they they take such a low percentage of their cases that it’s it’s very unlikely even with the best petition the best ask to the court that you’re going to get granted and what happens is you have to start at the very bottom in most cases again there are exceptions in the Constitution where the Supreme Court has what’s called original

jurisdiction and and the case can start there but the the vast majority of cases start at a trial level court it’s the very first court that you go to and after you get a result there you can appeal to an appell at court got to go through the whole process again and see if those judges agree with you and from there you can petition to the Supreme Court and uh it’s it’s it’s a rare thing it’s like the lottery um again even the best cases don’t necessarily make it there and once you do even when you win it’s very often a small win um very few cases are actually these cases about civil rights a lot of them are technical statutory having to do with congress’s power and separation of powers and these sort of more um daily things that you don’t think of when you think about the Supreme Court but uh there are landmark cases and I think they tend to be in the area of civil rights that’s where we see cases that affect us most deeply it’s the things that people care about most deeply um it’s those really great stories the ones that you can name off the top of your head like brown V Board of Education Tinker V de Moes that’s the case that uh the mahoi case was actually building on where student students were protesting the Vietnam war with uh armbands um plusy versus Ferguson which you know was a terrible case but was eventually overturned you know these big names cases are the ones that have to deal with our most precious civil rights and they’re few and far between um but they’ve actually been the place where progress I think has been most uh most that’s where it happens you know very often the legislature fails us and so uh when it comes to advancing civil rights I think the Supreme Court has been at the head of all of that and so uh those landmark cases are the ones that have that have really transformed our society for the better and in our last few minutes um we had a question from Mr Hulk in barington Rhode Island um and it was question we kind of all have here but what are the like upcoming scotus cases that we should be watching closely yeah it’s funny because it’s often said by Court Watchers that big terms are followed by quiet terms which are Then followed by big terms and then quiet terms because the court doesn’t like to attract too much attention to itself and it’s careful about its uh appearance and this year not so much because last year was a big term there were a lot of big cases last term you know we had an Obamacare case we had uh this cursing triler case in the First Amendment we had a a case dealing with First Amendment religious rights so it was a big case as far as con a big term as far as constitutional law goes and yet next term I think is going to be even bigger we have a second amendment case it’s very likely we will get a a case dealing with racial preferences in college admissions uh there’s a case dealing with commercial speech in the First Amendment um there’s just more than that there’s an abort quite likely we will hear about you know uh uh I’m trying to

I’m losing my mind here there’s so many it’s it’s overwhelming um and I oh there’s a case involving the Boston Bomber the Boston bombers coming to the Supreme Court I mean this is a crazy term and so I’m excited for all of it I’m here for all of it well for all of that we’re gonna we’re gonna keep an eye on your podcast and and the work of Pacific Legal Foundation and we’re so thankful Kirk Anastasia thank you so much for being here um stay tuned to see their conversation on the Constitution and how it relates to its students next and then we’re going to go back and hear from Liz and more teachers from around the country so stay tuned give us your questions and we’ll see you soon thank you so much thanks for having me hello and welcome to this special Constitution Day edition of primary source Clos streets my name is Kirk Higgins and today we’re going to be celebrating Constitution Day by exploring these big principles of Liberty and equality um in particular I’m hoping to examine what the Constitution has to say about how these interact with one another and how they function within the Constitution how the Constitution helps to support them um to help me with this task I am excited to be joined by Anastasia Bowen senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation welcome Anastasia thanks for having me absolutely um so as you watch this video please think of questions you’d like to ask Anastasia we’ll be bringing her back on live on Constitution Day um to help to answer your questions um and if you want to follow the link below um you can submit those questions um you’ll also find a variet of re resources there that can help um if you’re looking to learn more about the Constitution um or celebrate Constitution Day so H St my first question is a tough one uh you know so you are a constitutional lawyer with the Pacific leing Foundation could you just tell us a little bit what what does that mean yeah I sue the government when it violates our constitutional rights uh my area of expertise is representing people when they go to start a business or they go to get a job and they see a Thicket of government regul ation that M basically makes their dream impossible but I also represent people when they’re forbidden from speaking as they’d like to speak or when the government denies them equal treatment based on their race or the gender that they were born into basically I’m here to make sure that the government treats you equally and fairly under the Constitution very cool so I’m already hearing big ideas about Liberty kind of people’s Liberty to choose how it is that they can be an entrepreneur and and make Goods to sell um and also that equality piece right making sure that we’re all being treated equally before the law um so this brings me to my to my big question for the day and as we’re looking at the Constitution the Constitution was written some 230 years ago um I guess you know my question is as we’re thinking about Liberty and equality and how the Constitution supports it do we really have to look at the document itself I mean it’s kind of old It Was Written in a time before computers were invented um what what’s the point why do we why should we go back and read the Constitution yeah I think arguably the Constitution matters more than ever it

establishes our rights and our role Visa the government and as the government comes to play a bigger role in our lives the Constitution will naturally come to play a bigger role as well I mean if you think about the pandemic when the government was passing all sort of of regulations we have to make sure that the government is acting reasonably that it isn’t acting only to Dole out favors or uh arbitrarily or unfairly we have to make sure that we have some autonomy over our lives and that we hold the government uh to the agreement set out in the Constitution um in terms of it only having limited powers that respect our individual rights I think kids sometimes tend to think that the government and the Constitution is sort of an adult thing that it’s something that only enters Our Lives when we have you know big responsibilities uh that’s later on in life but everyone has constitutional rights and many Supreme Court cases have involved people under the age of 18 um from the right not to say the Pledge in school or the right to speak freely both in school and outside of school or the right to be free from random searches or to be treated fairly if you’re accused of a crime everyone enjoys constitutional rights and uh they’ll always matter as long as we exist in a society uh that’s governed by a government all right you’ve convinced me uh and you’ve kind of pointed to there’s a big Supreme Court case that just came down that has to do with students in schools and hopefully on Constitution Day itself you and I be able to talk a little bit about that um but for today since you’ve convinced me uh let’s go ahead and take a quick closer look at the Constitution um and see what we can unpack there so Anastasia I’d love to start these close reads out just with a little bit of historical context because history is kind of my background and it’s the thing that I love so just to kind of set the table as we’re talking about the Constitution it was drafted in the hot summer of 1787 um it was set out for ratification on September 17th of 1787 which of course is now Constitution Day um it went out for ratification um simply meaning that the states had to debate it talk about it um in order to pass it so it could formally replace legally the AR Confederation as the new social contract amongst the states um and it’s broken down into these tiny seven sections um talking about the legislature the executive the Judiciary sort of the nature of the union and relationship among the states the amendment process the supremacy clause meaning it’s the law that we all look to and then laying out this ratification process um so in looking at that sort of jumble um and then looking at all of the 27 Amendments that have been passed since if you’re going to tell me all right we know that the constitution is important to look at we’re going to look at two different Clauses to say um where would you point me to First what should we take a look at my personal favorites and that’s a tough one because it’s a beautiful document my personal favorites are the ninth and 14th Amendment which together mean that there’s a presumption at all times that we are free to act as we want and anytime the government takes away any of our liberties from the libert that you see explicitly written out in the Constitution like you know

the famous ones the right to free speech uh the right to uh uh have a jury trial the ones that we can all list off the top of our head um from those to also the unwritten Liberties that exist just as a matter of our Being Human and being born the right to dress how we want you know when I woke up today it was my right to choose how I how I dressed up the right to I don’t know create a lemonade a lemonade stand on the corner all of those rights can’t be taken away without good reason and good processes and so I think that’s a very important principle that is protected by the nth and 14th amendments all right well let’s take a close look at the Ninth Amendment and see what it’s got to say here so the Ninth Amendment part of that original 10 Amendments that were passed called The Bill of Rights says the enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people onia one of the first questions I have too is why why was this included in that first package of the Bill of Rights what is it about the ninth amendment that we that we wanted to make sure that we got in there with these first amendments to the Constitution yeah well when the Constitution was being drafted there were two main parties aguta for and against it and those were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were especially afraid about an overreaching national government and so they didn’t want to approve the Constitution without an Express guarantee of Rights or what we now know as the bill of rights and so the Federalist however said hey if we list out some rights people are going to think that those are the only rights that we have and we can’t possibly sit down and list out all the rights we have because those that list would be innumerable I mean we have the right to to you know as I was saying to to go out in on the streets in a pink hat we have we have just a basic entitlement to Liberty and so we can’t set out all of the rights in a Bill of Rights so James Madison comes up with this genius solution to appease both the Federalists and the uh Anti-Federalists and he says that hey we’ll add in some language that makes clear that just because we list out some rights that shouldn’t be taken to mean that we don’t have others or that others are entitled to lesser treatment so it was this beautiful political compromise by James Madison that allowed us to come to a constitutional agreement and to get that Constitution ratified so is this something that the Supreme Court has appealed to in in different cases or or is this one of those that you know it’s a good thing that it’s there it’s for us to look to and remember but it’s not necessarily been a part of the the legal code or sort of our legal understand we have seen overall the Supreme Court recognize the Ninth Amendment and recognize rights that are not explicitly listed out in the Constitution so for example you will see cases recognizing a right to privacy well you can’t find the right to privacy listed out anywhere in the Constitution and yet there are several cases um upholding that right there are cases regarding the right to rear your children uh to direct your children’s

upbringing to direct their education uh one of my personal favorites the right to earn a living the right to combine your passion and your interest and your particular talents and to go out into the world and to earn a living by providing a valuable service hey that’s not anywhere listed in the Constitution and yet there are several cases uh recognizing that right and protecting that right so overall we we do see cases enforcing the Ninth Amendment although I think we would be better off if there was even more protection for these unenumerated rights and courts really took them uh extremely seriously so I I I’m really fascinated about how you phrased that too because again thinking about you as a as a constitutional attorney um I guess thinking about our big question again why why do we bother looking at the text of the Ninth Amendment it seems the way that that you’re describing the relationship between the Supreme Court and between um the different amendments and the Clauses and things that are with within the Constitution it’s sort of a conversation like a constant debate and discussion between different legal minds thinking about this document and trying to interpret it in light of this understanding of Liberty and equality is that is that sort of the fair way of characterizing sort of the work that you do as a constitutional attorney but also the work that we do as Citizens in understanding the Constitution I think that’s fair and I think that’s why you sometimes see disagreement among justices about what the Ninth Amendment means it’s because that some of them don’t like some of the Liberties that are recognized by the Ninth Amendment and they don’t really want to get in the business of of deciding which Liberties are protected uh what the Ninth Amendment encompasses because they see it as encroaching upon the government’s ability to regulate they see rights as getting in the way and so there’s been some reluctance by certain justices to recognize the full breath of the ninth of the nth Amendment and to to establish what’s rights are protected and I personally think that we should do away with trying to designate out which is protected and just and just acknowledge that we live in a free world that we are free to to act as we like within reason and anytime the government acts that just puts the burden on the government to to justify its action but this is part of the debate is how strong of a protection do we give the Ninth Amendment which rights are protected what’s the Court’s role in enforcing it and that’s uh that’s part of my job is to advocate for for what we think is the proper reading of the Constitution wow that’s that’s really really awesome and and what a cool job you have too I’m I’m jealous um and so the other one you mentioned was the 14th Amendment um and I’ve called out section one of the 14th Amendment here um in particularly because of this due process clause because as I understand it due process is an important um an important idea um and it’s particularly important when we’re talking about these rights and Liberties that individual has there there has to be this this or due process involved whenever it is that that rights and Liberties are are somehow conversation with what government action is so can you sort of first I mean just touch on like what’s going on with this 14th Amendment and then maybe a little

bit about what what what due process really is yeah so the Ninth Amendment sort of sets out our liberties and the due process clause is how they actually get protected the due process clause has been interpreted as having two aspects procedural due process and substantive due process so those are big words what do they mean procedural due process means that anytime the government takes Liberty away it has to be done through a fair procedure that is if we’re going to lock you up in jail well we have to have a trial first that’s just fair and it can’t be some Kangaroo Court there have to be some basic aspects of it that make it fair so you have to have notice of what you’re being accused of you’re entitled to counsel you’re entitled to present evidence they couldn’t just lock you up by say random lottery or by a five minute trial that really gives you no protection at all the process through which they take away your Liberty has to be meaningful and that takes that that applies also to law making so anytime Congress is making a law that process has to be fair too the legislators can just all get together and play a game of rock paper scissors and then whoever wins rock paper scissors gets to decide the law um The process by which laws are passed have to be fair so that’s procedural due process but there’s also another aspect of due process which is called substantive due process and it means that while the process of how a law is enacted or how your Liberty is taken away that’s a necessary component of a law being valid but it’s not enough the law also in and of itself has to be a fair one otherwise it can’t really be considered a legitimate law a law isn’t just anything a valid law is one that’s fundamentally fair and so what that means is even if a law has gone through all of the proper processes uh basically it has to be a good one it has to be taking away your Liberty for good reason has to be taking away those Liberties that we just mentioned in the Ninth Amendment for good reason in order to be valid yeah so there I think we’re touching a bit on that equality thing too right thinking about Liberty and equality are two big themes for the day um and particularly again me being a history guy thinking about the 14th amendment being passed in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery recognizing in African-American men in this instance as being equal citizens of the United States I think is is really something that’s really powerful and it seems like that’s what’s carried through with this idea of due process um and so I guess I’ll just ask to um on this one how how has the due process uh how has the due process clause been applied um by the Supreme Court what what is its significance why should we know about it yeah I think that the importance of the history of the 14th Amendment can’t be understated um it is so vital to understand where it came from and that was that you know after the Civil War we recognize that

the federal government needed to play a much stronger role in protecting our rights from abuse by the states prior to the Civil War it was It was decided by the Supreme Court that the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that left states to be really a place of law lawlessness a place where uh people’s rights were being violated particularly L for African-Americans uh you know it was just a very bad place to be and the federal government the Constitution really didn’t have much to say about it and so the 14th Amendment says that all people need to be treated equally and fairly and that their rights cannot be taken away without good reason and they can’t be treated differently without good reason and I think uh that’s been a very powerful tool for civil rights however there is one bone to pick I have uh with the Supreme Court and that is that they have interpreted this amendment to give different levels of protection depending on the right at issue so uh they have said that where the right is explicitly enumerated in the Constitution where we see it written out uh or where a right is considered fundamental then the Court’s going to take a really really really good look at the law to make sure that it’s it’s necessary and worthwhile but for other rights for unenumerated rights or rights that the court doesn’t think important then they’re just going to subject it to uh a rather low level of scrutiny they’re going to presume that the the legislature was acting constitutionally they’re going to give it the benefit of the doubt and it really gives us this dual treatment of rights that I think uh is not supported by the history of the 14th Amendment it’s not supported by the ninth amendment I mean you can see how this very much conflicts with what we just read about in the ninth amendment that that some rights shouldn’t be treated as lesser than others and so um even though the due process clause has been an extremely significant tool for civil rights cases because it allows us to go into court and to sue the states and to say hey you’re taking away our Liberty unfortunately there is this dual treatment of Rights um that relegates some rights like the right to earn a living to a lower level of protection well Anastasia thank you so much um coming back to our big question here here um you know thinking about is the Constitution is the text of the Constitution still relevant today um you know I I think it’s it’s fascinating to look at this for a couple of reasons I mean again the way that you’ve outlined this um and and even in the sort of the the the complex sort of like yes but kinds of of things that that get woven in there um shows I think the the importance of understanding this document but also the importance of of of all of us understanding it so that we can continue to contribute to this sort of ongoing National conversation about how we protect these rights and how we work towards the betterment of everyone which I I think is exciting especially on Constitution days we think about the

opportunity of everybody who’s watching this video all of us in the United States having this opportunity to sort of continue this work and continue these conversations and continue to work uh to to make the Constitution live up to those principles of the Declaration of of of equality for all and liberty for all um which I don’t know I get kind of excited about I think it’s a pretty cool cool opportunity yeah I mean I would just follow up on that by saying that many places in the world have written constitutions and yet they can be very big abusers of Rights you know there are there are totalitarian governments out there uh Russia and others that have explicit protections for let’s say the right to press the right to Free Press and yet you see that those rights are being abused so I think that what really matters is not just having a written protection but having a culture of the Constitution the reason that our rights are so protected in this country is because there has been a lot of Engagement with people uh with their constitution you know we love it we cherish it we try to understand it and I think that it’s this culture of understanding our Constitution and appreciating our rights that are listed out into it which lead to a to a free Society it’s not the document in itself that’s enough it’s really people being engaged with it that will ensure that uh we get to continue living our our free way of life well honestly thank you again for joining me um and all of you watching um what questions have you all had as you have we as we’ve been working through this if you have any um please share them in the link below um as I said OB stage will be back with me on Constitution Day to talk more about this um and I’m hoping to on that day that we can get into um case that just got decided this year having to do with a a cheerleader um from a school in that area and what she said on Snapchat sort of how rights play out and and how sort of the process of of discussion and debating these rights play out so I’m really looking forward to that um but again Anastasia thank you so much thanks for having me absolutely and we’ll see you all next time well welcome back to Bill of rights institute’s Constitution Day live programming I’m Rachel Davon humph your host for the day and this next segment I am so excited about because it is some of my favorite people history and Civic teachers from across the country talking about how Liberty and equality are being taught and learned about in their classrooms my colleague Liz Evans from uh Phoenix Arizona will be speaking to both Kathy heggy teaching in California and Cynthia Bader teaching in Washington DC you can submit your questions throughout the day in our YouTu YouTube chat so we’d love to hear from you take it

away hello everyone I am Elizabeth Evans Regional program manager here at the Bill of Rights Institute and Welcome to our teaching history and Civics today segment for this segment I am joined by B Master teacher Kathy hii who teaches in s and Salmo California and who is also wearing Constitution earrings today I would like to make sure we point that out because it is Constitution Day and this is what we do right so Kathy I’m gonna have you go ahead and introduce yourself tell us a little bit about your school and what you teach sure hi and welcome I mean thank you for having me happy Constitution Day I’m so excited um I did want to start first by saying thank you uh because I am so passionate about um what the Bill of Rights does for teachers and students around the country and I have just truly been a benefactor to so much of um the hard work that comes out of BR so thank you for everything um and and thank you to your team and I’m truly truly um feeling very privileged and blessed to be here today on Constitution Day because it is truly one of my favorite days of the year uh I do teach at San Dominico school it’s a uh Independent School an amazing School located in San emo California we’re a day and a boarding school um and if you don’t know where San andalo is we’re in Northern California about 15 miles you cross over that Golden Gate Bridge and we’re about 15 miles up the road hang a left and there we are uh currently I teach United States history to Juniors I teach international relations ethnic studies and applied economics to seniors uh last year though I did have the privilege of taking a year off of my regularly scheduled social studies preps and I journeyed into a year-long um wow just a year-long rebirth of of teaching this it’s a it’s a course it’s a core course here at San Dominico and it just Embraces our our values and and kind of our Traditions it’s a social justice class and all of our Juniors take it in a process that aims towards them creating this C cumulative just Rose Project and it’s just all about service and and just giving back to their local or or or larger communities so that year was uh very impactful for me so I did take a year off last year and teach social justice and then before San Dominico I taught AP US History and AP Psychology for about 17 years at a small independent school for about 10 in LA and then I started it all in eastern Pennsylvania at a big Suburban high school which I happen to graduate from which is Wilson High School that is fantastic um so as your I mean you have lots of different experience what does liberty and equality mean to you well to me personally it means it just it’s just centered on on civic education right it’s it’s to me understanding that is to understand the outcome of an educated citizenry a Civic body that is educated and then um understands that Liberty comes with responsibility should then be able to like look at Injustice and that’s the key for me it’s about looking

at the injustices that are around and then work to correct it so typically when there’s oppression and Injustice there’s also inequality so for me the true course towards understanding Liberty inequality is charted by an educated citizenry whose Liberties are protected by a democratic process but that democ that Democratic process has to embrace civic education that’s such a good answer this is why we love teachers so much right here I love that so when you look at then what is and you kind of already said it but I want to make sure I do ask the question is what is liberty and equality mean in your classroom and to your students because like you said you have seniors in high school so they’re getting ready to go out into the world whether it’s trade school college you know whatever it is they’re doing what do those principles mean in your classroom into your students so and that that’s this is a tough one for me this is the one that I had to park with for a while and think about this question you know we have our we have the theory right we have we have what we we we have the the company line we know what we should be saying right and what Liberty and equality should look like in our classrooms but really at the end of the day is that what it looks like in our classrooms probably not um it’s hard for me to answer on behalf of my students especially here at San Dominico because we are truly um the epitome of diversity with a boarding program like we have we’ve got students from all over the country um we have about 130 students in our boarding program and and they represent over 23 nations of the world so when I have to answer a question on behalf of the students on what they think it’s hard because I really can’t pretend to know I can’t pretend to know what those things mean what I can what I can offer is that after teaching social justice last year and and it really was quite a journey for me personally and as a citizen I really had to take that Journey with with that group of young people and I really had to ask myself the same hard questions that I was asking them you know what was I doing and and was I even identifying the right need gaps and was I applying the efforts to the right places to really have the most outcome so in my class what I really tried to do is I tried to encourage students to be equipped with the skills they need to go out and ask the hard questions but also I try to really en en encourage them to to think and identify realistic need gaps and then go out and and try to create a positive impact because no matter how small their efforts are every action every action no matter how small is better than apathy towards Injustice so love that I you have such a unique teaching position and I think it’s such

a a great thing for you to share what that looks like and to and to talk about being humble you talk about taking that Journey with your students that’s one of my favorite things about teaching is that we don’t know everything but we’re showing them that and we’re showing them you know you’re moving toward that so as we kind of look at this and end on a hopeful note what are you hopeful for when it comes to Liberty and equality in America well I love that I love that I love that you brought up that that that humility piece because that is a tough thing that’s a tough idea for adolescent whose frontal loes haven’t quite finished developing right that humility piece um but I do I do role model humility regularly and it’s not by choice right because I in the class room I make a lot of mistakes and I really quickly realized how behind I was with my own Civic activism teaching last year you know teaching you know being in this unique situation of kind of stepping into a role that I really wasn’t prepared for but I you know to leave on a really I on a really positive note I have so much hope I mean I I see the wave of social change like I see it hitting the beach and I see my young people are just hungry for it they’re hungry for it here at EST uh San Dominico um and they were they they’ve been hungry for it for my entire teaching career the key is that education right that idea of we have systems in place um we need to know how they work so that we can we can access them and that we can change them and we have to also recognize that unbridled passions as as great as the intentions are they can be super counterproductive and right now at this age group there’s a lot of passion so for me you know I I try to just remind them to kind of bridle the passion focus on the systems learn your Civic learn your Civic responsibilities and act on them and in a lot of ways I think it’s the older generation that’s really holding back the youth I’m so inspired I truly am so inspired by the young people here at San Dominico and the young people I’ve taught um they’re not accepting apathy um as their legacy for civic activism I mean I see positive change they see need gaps and they want to fight for liberty and equality for all and as a teacher I need to get on board and I need I just need to teach them the process the leadership skills and then just get out of their way because I they’re just they’re going to be amazing yes well thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us Kathy we so appreciate it and hope you have a wonderful Constitution Day happy happy Constitution Day to you too and to everyone take care bye bye bye Kathy and I am going to switch over because we have another Bri Master teacher who is joining us hello Cynthia I’m so excited to see you again as a side note I’ve gotten to talk to all these teachers and they’re all so

amazing hence my super excitement so I am joined in this segment by Cynthia Bader uh who is a b Master teacher who actually teaches in Washington DC and I would say here in Washington DC but I am in Arizona and you are on a different Coast show Cynthia if you want to take a little time introduce yourself tell us a little bit about your teaching load and your school absolutely thank you good to see you Elizabeth and everybody uh so I’m an army brat and was born in Texas lived in New Mexico and Michigan um my mother was born in Japan she’s a naturalized US citizen had a career working for the US government as a civil servant that’s how she met my father my father when had he retired from the Army he actually taught as well after he retired from his military career he taught High School Roc in Michigan let’s see I have a husband and two adult children a son and a daughter my son was born on Dr Seuss’s birthday and my daughter was born on Constitution Day so make of that what you will yes it’s also my daughter’s birthday so I’ve been and I’ve been teaching for um over 30 years now I formerly taught middle school and now in the Twilight of My Career I’m teaching fourth grade at an all girl school here in DC c um I’m both a Home Room teacher and a US geography teacher at my school we’re departmentalized even at my grade level here I teach three sections and this includes with us geography teaching Civics of course we launched our constitution unit today and so it includes teaching Civics and the reading skills particular to reading history so the non-fiction skills uh my my department is heavily reading and writing based um I’m fortunate to teach at a school that deeply values C Civic engagement um so I’m fortunate to have the time I need to dive in to founding documents with my students they ask really good questions even at this age and and I’ve I’m well I’ve been teaching fully in person since last spring which is exhausting so for anyone out there who’s in a similar boat I’m with you so that’s kind of who I am and a little bit about my my teaching I love that you teach fourth grade because we’ve had a middle school teacher we’ve had a high school teacher and I think that sometimes you know the elementary gets lost and I love hearing that that is what you get to do it just it ignites a fire and it’s so wonderful yes so our whole theme is liberty and equality so Cynthia what is liberty and equality mean to you okay so for me I’m gonna pause and say I just had some ninth graders where former students pop in to see me and they all recited the Preamble with me when they saw that I was doing the unit so just had to stop and it’s so fun when they stop in Liberty equality um for me liberty means that I’m I have the freedom to do what I believe I’m uniquely called and equipped to do in the world and also the freedom to act according to my conscience and to speak

according to my conscience so speech and beliefs and I’m inspired I’m looking up at a quotation I keep on my bulletin board where my students can see it Lord Acton said Liberty is not the power of doing what we like but the right of being able to do what we ought so that is always been by my desk it informs me it’s what shapes my what I teach my students um so for me the pursuit of happiness is is that it’s the the ability to act according to my beliefs and conscience in the way I feel called in the world around me and I want that same freedom for other people as well and then that ties in with equality because equality in in my understanding is about the fact that each human being has equal value they’re born with the same rights I have uh I think I saw Carol B Birkin talk about the tiger stripes and I actually saw the word granted granted freedoms and I paused and said now in my class I want you to know that I disagree with that and that’s my opinion but anyway I to me equality is about the fact that we all have equal values people are born with the same rights I have with regard to freedom of conscience the freedom to act in accordance with their beliefs so Liberty and equality for me they’re inextricably linked I can’t want Liberty for myself without wanting others to equally share in that Liberty so that’s that’s how I sum it up that is amazing this is why we have teachers on they’re so good at explaining these so you know with your fourth graders um and I also love that you’re your ninth graders come in they’re they’re talking about the Preamble so what does liberty and equality then mean in your classroom and really to your students because Elementary is is a very different set of children I guess I’m saying than Junior higher high school exactly because in elementary we’re still teaching them those skills we’re not D we are doing content I’m fortunate I get to choose the content with which to practice the skills so we will be closely reading Frederick Douglas’s Independence Day speech and um parts of the Constitution so fre actually freedom of conscience is a Big Driver of my teaching practice and I explicitly invite my students and Empower them to act according to their beliefs and conscience my school um happens to be an Episcopal school so we have um Chapel Services that might include language that is counter to the beliefs of some of my students and their families and they’re not obligated to say those words I explicitly tell them that that it’s better to act according to your conscience than to say what you might feel that you should say because the people around you are saying it um I actually explicitly invite my students for to watch for times that they might encounter something with which they disagree um they might not believe it’s factual and then to speak up so whether it’s something I say something in a textbook a video the media that that’s our classroom as a place where they can can question authority they’re empowered to do that in my classroom I actually also very much believe in respecting

their privacy so even though I technically don’t have to look in their desks or their Cubbies I do ask to role model that respect so my students I another thing I I think about with my students is I believe right now um children element children all students are seeing adults telling others what they’re free to say and not to say and what I see is a chilling effect on on children so and on their minds so I really work hard to make my classroom a space where they learn skills I teach them phrases to use to be able to have constructive discussions across different beliefs so it’s very skills-based I but it’s modeling too even at the elementary level there’s a sense of modeling what that looks like so because we love to end on hopeful notes yes um what are you hopeful for when it comes to Liberty and equality in America especially through the lens of an elementary teacher right it’s actually a a very healthy place to be right now in many ways um so first of all where I live during the pandemic I began seeing a lot more children being given freedom to play independently outside being given Independence they maybe didn’t have as much before so when I I believe that when children have lives that are largely scripted by adults they put it this way when they have more time for free play I Believe children grow more of a sense of agency and personal responsibility and my opinion is that agency and personal responsibility are essential to a republic so and in order for them to grow up to Value their Liberty as adults they need to get a taste of what that’s like on a child’s level so that gives me hope to see more agency among children around me and second I’m hearing more conversations about equality important and hard conversations and what and what equality means and I see children it came up today on our first just talking about the Preamble I had students nine-year-olds raising their hands asking well what about this but what about women they couldn’t vote then I mean they’re asking that so I see younger Americans grappling with that question of what equality means and wanting to understand different perspectives about it and they want to be inclusive I don’t know that they always see all adults being inclusive but they want to be inclusive and so it gives me hope to see them wanting to have inclusive and ganging conversations about these hard questions about equality and what it means because on their level these are essential questions so that’s and that is so huge for I I have a 10-year-old so that is a huge thing Cynthia s thank you so much for taking time out of your day out of your classroom day and spending time with us thank you what you do for thank you for what you do for civic education um everyone stay tuned because coming up and Cynthia actually already talked about this but at the top of the hour we’re gonna have a live scholar talk with Tony Williams and Carol Birkin thank you everybody and have a wonderful

Constitution Day thank you thank you for all you do thank you bye bye thank you so much for joining us for the Bill of Rights Institute Constitution Day live programming I am so excited for our next segment remember that you can ask questions throughout all of our segments on our YouTube channel so get ready because you are going to really want to talk to our guest it is my great pleasure to introduce br’s own senior scholar Tony Williams and the venerable Dr Carol Burkin Tony thanks Rachel Rachel hi everyone uh this year we’re celebrating Constitution Day by exploring the relationship of the principles of Liberty and equality and how we continue to balance those principles today for this special episode of scholar talks we’re very honored to have Dr Carol Burkin here with us live uh on Constitution Day to discuss Liberty and equality and to answer your questions uh if you have not yet seen our recorded discussion there will be a replay after this conversation Carol I want to thank you very much for joining us and offering your expertise as well as historic context for understanding Liberty and equality today on Constitution Day happy to be here great well my first question

has to do with the founders the Declaration of Independence asserted we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government so equality seems to be that Central promise uh really uh what we might call The Guiding star uh of the American regime so how did the founders understand the principle of equality you know was it equal rights was it equality under the law Equal justice how did they understand equality well the Declaration of Independence does Begin by declaring that all men were created equal and that they’re enjoy they enjoyed unalienable that is they couldn’t give them up under any circumstances or have them taken away natural rights to life liberty and Jefferson then waxes a little poetically and he changes what everyone stood to be the third fig right which was the right to property and he says the right to happiness I can assure you that all men who had property that was happiness but Thomas Jefferson and most of the leaders of the Revolution understood this idea of equality and natural rights the way John lock the English political philosopher who they followed understood it this absolute equality that couldn’t be alien existed only really in a state of nature that is before people came together to agree to create society and government people like said sometime in the far distant past decided to live under what he called a social contract to abide by a set of rules and laws that in many ways modified their absolute rights but protected them from a world in which might made right over time a really good government passed laws that created specific new Liberties like freedom of the press or the right to a trial by jury although these were manmade or societal rights rather than n natural rights the government was expected to respect and sustain Ain these traditional Liberties what came to be called traditional Liberties as well as natural rights if they failed to do so the social contract made between the government and the people was declared

null and void and the people had a right to create a new government now the Declaration of Independence as I’m sure you know was written to prove to show that the British government had broken its contract by endangering not only the natural rights of the colonists but also their traditional rights that had been established by law on precedent but it begs the question who exactly were the people natural law might have implied all human beings regardless of race or wealth or gender height age but traditional law did not the traditional Liberties Thomas Jefferson wanted to protect did not apply equally to all that is who were the people who could establish a new government or abolish an Old Government who was entitled to govern to actually govern and who is entitled to select them as Governors who had under the law been guaranteed personal autonomy and who had had their autonomy restricted man-made law and legal precedents all operated in the 18th century and in many places today as well to create or sustain social hierarchy not equality when Jefferson and other leaders of the Revolution spoke or wrote of the people having the right to restore natural rights and the protection of the unalienable rights their def definition was very different from our own today in America for them only legally free white men who owned property were eligible to assert these unalienable rights and only they were entitled to play an active role in selecting the people who would make the new rules and design the new government these were the people these men free white men who own property they were we would say active citizens who could demand that the social contract be upheld or that a new government be created the vast majority of the people living in the colonies and later once the revolution began the states were destined to be passive recipients of the protections of any new government that was created now there might be laws that protected indentured servants or tenant Farmers or African-Americans or women of any race or class but these groups were

not allowed to play a role in approving the lawmakers or in making the laws they were defined as dependents and they lived under under the new social contract the Revolution was about to create and although they might benefit to one degree or another from it they were not entitled to play an active role in shaping it to have a political voice in the 18th century was to enjoy a privilege others were not entitled to enjoy this is why I argue and all my students can tell you I argue it often that one of the great engines of American history that is what moves our history along is the struggle to ensure that full and active citizenship become a Birthright not a privilege and on that historical timeline that you can draw in your mind about equality we can see that Birthright coming first to white men who didn’t own property and the early 19th century then for a very brief time to black men who had been freed from enslavement after the Civil War then in the 20th early 20th century to women and with the Civil Rights Movement to people of color so equality is an emerging historical concept it’s not really a fixed value that Americans hold right uh excellent and and as you’re mentioning some of the ways that equality differed you know the the Revolutionary and founding aspirations of equality in the American Republic sometimes fell short and were not perfectly achieved for for all people and and you know students reflect reflexively and and very right rightly you know wonder how slavery could coexist you know with this new regime of Liberty uh and so in in in what ways uh did slavery contradict uh this ideal this aspiration for equality well we would think the answer is simple and there were people even in the 18th century not not many but there were people who argued that slavery contradicted the whole idea of a war fought for Liberty and freedom but as I said the way in which people perceive the world differs from Century to Century and the social hierarchy that laws and tradition and custom had created in the world in which people lived made it not seem

so so outrageous to use a modern term that some people had more freedom than others some people had more Liberty than others some people had more rights than others and in that hierarchy you can see husbands had more rights than wives parents had more rights than children uh F uh free people had more rights than indentured servants Masters had more rights than than than their apprentices and there were a whole category of people who had no really no rights at all and while this seems so bizarre to us in a world of tremendous that that people understood to be organized in a hierarchical way this seemed if nothing more than a little unfortunate but the way the world was uh I I I know that it’s hard to picture this but but imag imagine if you were an 18-year-old 20 years ago and you would say why are you saying I can’t vote I’m an adult no dear you’re not and then suddenly a law is passed that says yes you are an adult you can you can vote so there are a whole series of restraints that when they are lifted it seems self-evident that they should never have been there in the first place but while they’re op op ating and they’re the word for it is normative they’re the norm most people don’t really Ponder them very much they’re busy leading their own lives they’re busy thinking about their own f it it didn’t trouble enough people that slavery existed in the midst of Liberty and freedom for some right and you know uh you recently completed a very interesting and important new book book uh that fits perfectly well in our discussion of of equality and equal justice it’s called the child in the electric chair so uh can you tell us a little bit about how this book came about and also tell us the story of George Junius stinny Jr and a little bit about racial Injustice in the era of Jim Crow yes uh this book was an active astounding research by a very dear friend of mine Eli f uh a fine historian who contracted pancreatic cancer and died before he could complete the book he called me up we had been friends since graduate school he called me up and he said will you have all the notes for the last chapter will you write the last chapter

and will you see this book to publication and I said of course uh University of South Carolina press which is where George stinny suffered this horrific miscarriage of Justice uh was eager to publish it and so they did George stinny Jr was a 14-year-old black boy living in what was a Mill Town that is the whole town everything in it was owned by the mill owners and everybody worked in the mill uh the mill owners happened to be very benign very uh benevolent and strangely enough the black and white workers got along fairly well they were segregated but they got along fairly well until two young white girls were found brutally murdered it was immediately assumed because this was the era of Jim Crow that is this was the era of segregation and law that operated to suppress the rights of African-Americans throughout the South I know because I grew up in Alabama before the Civil Rights Movement began I mean I was young before the Civil Rights Movement began and I saw Jim Crow in operation so it was immediately assumed a black man had done this and the sheriff went into town and asked someone who do you think could have done this who who’s a bad bad actor in town and the guy said oh George stiny Jr that kid is a no good and that that was enough that was they never looked for anybody else they never searched for the kind of evidence you would expect them to search for they arrested George S stinny Jr I mean here was a a 90 something pound prepubescent he hadn’t even really experiened puberty at that concave chest you see in young boys who was accused of brutally attacking two girls and ripping the front bicycle wheel off the bicycle in apparent rage they couldn’t they didn’t search for any bloody clothing he might have had on they they did they never inquired if anybody else had done it it was enough to say a Troublesome black person did this and they rushed this trial to to begin they tried this young boy in an adult Court in an adult Court not in a juvenile court the trial the jury was all white in a town that was overwhelmingly half black and half

white the trial took a couple of hours one afternoon and the jury took 10 minutes to convict him and condemn him to death in the electric chair an astonishing trampling of what we today would call the rule of law and and Justice the process of Justice now the governor could have commuted his s could have pardoned him could have commuted his sentence to life in prison his lawyers who had been appointed to serve for him who all both were hoping to run for office in a segregated world where it was really important to keep black men under control did not cross-examine any of the witnesses didn’t put forward any Witnesses of their own and the governor said who was also thinking of running for the Senate and wanted to make sure he stood firm for segregation now and forever and that he would keep black people black men who were as far as they were concerned animals who lusted after white women in their place so the governor said I’m not commuting the sentence I’m not pardoning him his attorney said no don’t bother I mean he’s guilty we’re sure he is we got a confession out of him they took a 14-year-old black child into a room with sheriffs and symbols of white Authority and they suggested to him if he confessed he could go home and so he confessed and he didn’t go home the NAACP was the last hope for this young boy and they were not strong at the time this was the 1940s and they had other projects they were engaged in and they said we just can’t take up this fight and so 14-year-old George stinny went to the electric chair he was so small that they had trouble fitting him in the chair and when they finished electrocuting him his family said that he looked burnt to a crisp and that he was blue years went by years went by and finally two lawyers became interested in this case and they said this is a miscarriage of Justice I mean Jim Crow was technically over in the South the American law nation’s law applied to black people as well as white people and pro bono that is for no fee they took up this

case again and they argued it before a white woman judge who said I can’t retry George stinny Jr there’s no records of his case we don’t have any documents half the people involved are dead what I can do is I can more or less evict the sentence by saying that there was a miscarriage of justice that constitutional law was not followed and this is what she did and so in 2016 George sny’s case legally became a case of a miscarriage of Justice this tells you in the book includes a chapter on lynching the way in which African-American man with the slightest whiff of of a sense that they had been guilty of rape or of of some kind of attack on white women were brutally brutally tortured and killed it has a chapter on the NAACP but mostly it is the story of this 14-year-old boy who got caught up in in Jim Crow Justice which was no justice at all for him and I think it is a I think it is a warning to us to always remember that you cannot let whole races of people whole groups of people whole genders of people fall through the cracks if we are going to honor the Constitution right Carol such a powerful story especially reminding us of the importance of of equality on Constitution Day uh I read the book the child in the electric chair to powerful book I really recommend it to to the audience and I I can’t thank you enough for coming on uh to answer my questions and joining us in Constitution Day and I think Rachel may have a question or two from the audience we have had a couple of questions come in I really think that most people were just enraptured with the story that was just told it is such a I know in in in the studio here there were some some teary eyes uh as we think about just this Injustice this complete tragedy uh someone wanted to know if there are more stories just these un the story of of of of George St Jr is such an untold story are there other stories like this that you’re aware of that you can recommend us either books or or just individuals that you would recommend we look look to elevate their story to be more widely known well in the 20th century we have sadly a great great

number of them there’s a wonderful book called three lives for Mississippi which is the story of um two white uh civil rights Freedom Summer workers who went to Mississippi to um to register voters black voters and a local black activist and they were brutally murdered in in Mississippi there’s EMT till also in the 20th century also really after the Civil Rights Movement had had gained steam uh who was a young boy from Chicago who went down to visit his relatives and someone he apparently did not know the rules of the segregated world he had entered and they say he whistled at a white woman and they dismembered him I mean there are there are but but more than these brutal stories more than stories there are just endless stories of black people who were Tried by all-h juries who had no respect for the legal rights of these men and women they are they are told in sort of collective studies of black uh rights or lack of Rights throughout the Jim Crow period and they’re told in in the laws books about the laws that were on the books from Colonial times until until the 20th century of people for petty crimes for large crimes who did not really receive their constitutional rights did not really who somehow it was not necessary to operate under the rules of Law and you can find them in in any number of books that look at the law in African-Americans there’s a a project run by I think his name is Brett Stevenson uh today to try to achieve Equal justice under the law for African-Americans unjustly or without having been given their told their rights uh Ed even to this day so one of the qu one of the questions is we we work a lot with high school students and really it’s these are these are such powerful stories and telling the stories are very important but you’ve worked a lot in in your scholarship with young people how can we communicate these stories to students and Tony has worked a lot with young people in his book writing um to have them understand these miscarriages

of Justice Beyond just telling Beyond en encouraging them to learn the stories what what can we offer to students when it comes to this these kind of addressing these gross misjustice miscarriages of Justice well first of all we have to do something more than just say boy those were bad people they were wrong and that’s a that’s a really easy thing to do what I tried to say about Thomas Jefferson and and the men who worked on the Constitution the world they lived in saw saw things differently you have to have an Impulse to want to understand first of all that’s what a historian does historians proper historians don’t run around saying he was bad he was good he was right he was wrong we say what what was going on what was the context in which these kinds of things happened and what was the context in which people decided they shouldn’t happen happen anymore what’s that moment when people say no you can’t try a 14-year-old in an adult court that should be IL illegal so those kinds of you have to approach these questions as questions that ask why how uh when what was the what was the setting instead of I I often have a student who says oh those people were just bad that doesn’t really Enlighten us very much and second and this may be really uh a terrible thing to have to say students have to want to meet us halfway we have a lot we can teach them we have a lot we can tell them the Bill of Rights institutes has a lot to that can be shared with them but you have to want to have it shared with you if you if you don’t care I can’t I used to have a joke with my students I sayif you don’t read this I’m going to tell your mother it doesn’t work there has to be a kind of Confluence a meeting of your desire to understand the American past so you can better understand the American future that is the present and how to build the future you’re going to live in you you have to join that to all the work that histor Ians have done to uncover this information for you well on those words I think we can say thank you so much Carol berkin thank you Tony you Rachel up next we’re gonna give you the opportunity to watch the conversation that Tony and Carol had a couple of weeks ago and then uh to have the more more in-depth conversation on the nature of justice and equality and then afterwards we’re going to continue

our constitution day programming back here in the studio with a live conversation this is our last conversation of the of the day with uh Civics 101’s Nick kidichi so again submit your questions enjoy the programming and we look forward to seeing you back here at the top of the hour thanks thank you so both in terms of external threats and in ter of in terms of internal rot I guess you could call it they thought that the creation of a national government to oversee this would in the long run protect the Liberty uh and the the life and The Possession uh of property of of the greatest number of American citizens hi this is Tony Williams a senior fellow with the Bill of Rights Institute and this year we are celebrating Constitution Day by exploring ing the relationship of the principles of Liberty and equality and how we continue to balance these principles for this special episode of scholar talk I’m joined by Professor Carol Burkin a distinguished historian author and expert on the American Revolution and women’s history to explore how the founding generation interpreted Liberty and equality as you watch this video please think of questions you’d like to ask Dr Burkin we’ll be bringing her back on Constitution Day to answer your questions live follow the link below to submit questions and receive a variety of useful resources videos and e-lessons on the subject of the Constitution as we lead up to the day itself Carol I want to thank you very much for joining us to offer your expertise and provide some historical context on Liberty and equality delighted to be here great well my first question relates to the the earlier Colonial period in the struggle against Great Britain and in the American colonist spoke frequently of their traditional Liberties uh but they also spoke of their their natural rights during the resistance against Great Britain so what were some of those Liberties and and what is the difference between what they called the rights of Englishmen uh and natural rights uh I think people should think of natural rights in their perspective as the rights that preceded all creation of society government uh it’s very John loan that is an idea that there is something called the state of nature in which people existed with no regulation and no limitation at all uh and must have decided somewhere back in the M Mists of History uh no one dared give a date to it uh that maybe it would be better if they B basically formed

society and created a a a governing body that could protect those natural rights so the natural rights come from God and from nature that is that’s their understanding and they were Jefferson describes them in the Declaration of Independence as life liberty and Jefferson writes the pursuit of happiness because he is a flourish there but the men and we’re really talking not about the Revolutionary generation as a whole we’re talking about white men and white men of property they understood that what Jefferson was saying in a kind of romanticized way was the protection of property not not just your plot of land but rather your possessions that that you had a natural right to your life to Liberty is the hard one because I think what they really meant and and Scholars have disagreed about this your Liberty meant that you were free both in movement and free from Domination by another individual I they had to step rather gingerly about this because of course course many of them were slaveholders which certainly denied that right to African-Americans but Liberty I believe meant the the the opportunity to make One’s Own Way in the world both both physically and in terms of economic uh uh gain and in terms of what one thought and what one said uh but the pursuit of happiness I think really was understood by them as the other piece of this which was the right to retain your possessions safely the right to to keep and make use of what you have either earned by the sweat of your brow inherited from your family that is that that’s really what was being pursued happiness is unless you assume that that means happiness but I think Jefferson I don’t want to say led us astray but but he becomes very vague when he says the pursuit of happiness so those are your natural rights and and as Jefferson writes in the Declaration these are unalienable you you C you cannot be forced to give them up but you also can’t voluntarily give them up

apparently it’s like the leopard in his spots the leopard can’t give those spots up and and this is a an optimistic view that people uh psychologists later on and sociologists who have written books about people’s desire to be dominated people’s desire to have someone make decisions for them would argue with Jefferson about this uh the traditional Liberties that is the rights of Englishmen that they talked about were came after the creation of government and these were the laws the statutes the Customs the precedents uh the policies that the government set so when they said we have the rights of Englishmen they’re talking about uh uh the right to free speech they’re talking many of the things that ultimately become uh written into the Bill of Rights uh the right to a a a trial by your peers the these are I don’t want to say artificial but they they come after the government is created and the general understanding that the American colonists who supported the Revolution was that in fact the the social contract the agreement between the governed and those who govern them which lot talked about as a social contract that when people back in the midsts of time got together and said we’re going to create a government it was a contract that we will recognize the legitimacy of that government as long as it protected our natural rights as long as it served the best interests of the people at the point at which it ceased to serve the best interest of the people the contract was broken and I think it’s interesting students and teachers should Ponder the the terms contract this is an era really when the idea of uh legal agreements about things was beginning to really dominate another way of saying that is the rise of capitalism that these things were beginning to to develop and so lock speaks of it in the same way that if I signed a contract with the Bill of Rights Institute we both had to do what we promised to do otherwise the contract is null and void so what Americans are saying and you can if you read the Declaration of Independence and you read

past the Preamble into the body of the Declaration of Independence excuse me which is the part they thought was important it’s really a kind of lawyer lawyerly brief that says this is how the king broke the social contract and it’s interesting to look at it I I actually never hurts for a his orian of the era to reread that some of the things they accused the king of doing relate to natural rights that is the first one is he’s refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good you haven’t done what you promised to do in terms of our natural rights but many of them are about the post organization of society they’re about the way in which his policies and his treatment of laws already on the book or books or precedents already established by the government have not been attended to have not been obeyed and so the Declaration of Independence shows you the way in which these two sets of rights are combined to to fuel in fact a declaration of independence to fuel a war for independence excellent um so uh moving a little bit forward from the the time period of of the Declaration to the Constitution itself uh Liberties were were really threatened were in the 1780s uh and and that led to the Constitutional Convention and and men like uh Madison and Hamilton Washington and others they wanted a stronger national government that they thought would ironically do a better job of protecting Liberties than than a weak government so uh and you dial into this in your in your book a brilliant solution which was was fantastic uh and can you can you explain how they expected this new constitutional order to better protect Liberty well for one thing the protection of your life and your Liberty when there were foreign powers far more powerful that my students often think I once had a student who wrote From the Moment the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock which makes me think he was not a sailor uh landing on the Rock is not a good idea America was the most powerful country in the world it’s very hard sometimes to shake students these are college students from the belief that America’s position today is the position they always had but in fact in the 1780s people in Paris did not open their newspaper paper to find out what the people in America thought and were doing

because that was the most important thing in the world we were we were a third rate nation that they didn’t think really had a chance of lasting very long and in fact countries like Holland and France and England were thinking well when that country falls apart and if we can give it a little nudge we can divy it up we and we know this is true because the French Ambassador at the time the constitutional convention was meeting is writing home to his superiors well what part of the United States would the king like to take when it falls apart so clearly men who were nationalists that is Washington Hamilton gofen marus at the time madis Madison thought that 13 separate Sovereign countries which is how you really have to think about the states they weren’t administrative branches of a Nation they saw themselves as Sovereign independent Powers were’re not going to be able to protect the peoples of those States against Invasion against Indian attack against slave uprising which Southern States leaders white leaders worried about that there were the danger to your Liberty and the danger to your life were really quite quite real uh also Madison for instance thought that the people who had taken power in Virginia were corrupt the 18th century political leaders worried enormously about power corrupting we need to do that more today they they really believe that the lust for power was open-ended and Madison writes that the government of of Virginia they’re squabbling over who gets what what kind of power we need a government over the that government and other state governments that can take into account the needs of all the people but who also could um diminish the power of these state governments and that’s really what they wanted to do they wanted to create a uber power that was made up of uh they hoped the very best of every state you know the creme deeme of wise political men

who would uh in essence discourage this kind of state level greed that that Madison saw so both in terms of external threats and in ter of in terms of internal rot I guess you could call it they thought that the creation of a national government to oversee this would in the long run protect the Liberty uh and the the life and The Possession uh of property of of the greatest number of American citizens and that’s why they were strong Advocates I don’t think that it was because they themselves were power hungry uh if you would will allow me Hamilton for instance wanted a strong national government that could take its seat in the at the table with the European powers not for him his his own interest in his personal power was really not very he could have quit but he was a fabulous lawyer if he was interested in his own wealth and his own social status and his own everything being in the national government was not where it was at he could have made a much better life for his family if he he he wanted the country to to be powerful enough to protect itself always and I think that that was the Nationalist motivation when they went to this convention in Philadelphia thank you great well well James Madison uh then fights for Bill of Rights in the first Congress after the Constitution is ratified uh and the states ratify those 10 Amendments you wrote about that in your your book The Bill of Rights yes uh and so can you describe this struggle to create the Bill of Rights and and how did the Bill of Rights itself protect Liberty yes even though the Constitution was ratified of a large number a great number of American voters that is American white men who own property uh still had were wary about the national government they thought it was going to become as they saw the English government the government of Great Britain uh to it would become tyranical inevitably they believed it would become tyranical and what they wanted was to call a second convention and basically uh take away all of the powers that the national

government was given they were states rightest in the most extreme they believed that local government protected people’s rights better than this national government would and that they they wanted to eviscerate the powers that had been given to the federal government well this and and the strongest Advocates of this were in Madison own home state and so he uh worried a lot about this and as those who’ studied Madison know he was a big worrier generally and so he he said what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to and what these opponents by the way had claimed their biggest argument was this government is intended to be tyrannical because there’s no Bill of Rights in it there’s no statement about the rights of the people that proves that that uh uh danger is a foot well the men who wrote the Constitution said but most of the state governments already have a Bill of Rights in their and and our government has nothing to do with most of those issues so why should we say we’re not g to do something that we have no power to do let’s all go home they really wanted to go home they’d been fored months in Philadelphia away from their their home so Madison said that was a tactical mistake that a strategic mistake what we’ve got to do is in the First Co Congress we’ve got to issue a Bill of Rights and he was clever enough to say that Bill of Rights will not touch the powers of the federal government it will will guarantee all kinds of powers that American people are worried about even though really he knew that no enforcement uh uh mechanisms were available to the federal government he wrote this he wrote A long long I think there were 36 or 38 rights that he included all of which would have been recognizable to the average American white male most of which the colonies had and the British government had endorsed right and he submitted it and he thought of course Federalists that is the nationalists dominated in the Congress and in the presidency and so it’ll be easygoing and he was amazed to to discover that the Congress said go away don’t bother us we’ve got important things we have to do we have to set the

import export duties we have to decide where the permanent capital is going to be leave we have to create the Judiciary leave us alone with this we don’t need this Madison was stunned but he persisted and he persisted and he persisted and over the months people finally gave in and they said okay all right and ultimately they reduced Madison also was not a great stylist he was not a gven morus or an Alexander Hamilton or a Thomas Jefferson and he he made the argument that a it will win over a lot of the people who are still not throwing their support to the government it’ll win over North Carolina and Rhode Island who haven’t joined the union yet it will it will diminish the the push for a second convention and everybody said okay fine and they reduced it to 12 amendments actually the Senate reduced it to 12 amendments and and it passed and what is it Madison had a very complicated mind a very complex mind and he said even if we can’t provide an enforcement mechanism and we don’t until the 14th Amendment after the Civil War what we can do what he hoped we can do is we can establish in the minds of Americans that this is a statement is The Credo of what Americans believe in that they will internalize the Bill of Rights they will I mean he didn’t use that word but basically he hoped that people would internalize that this is what America stands for the Bill of Rights explain what America stands for to the world and to Americans themselves and so Madison had both practical political reasons for proposing the Bill of Rights but he also had these really quite lofty hopes that it would become the American predo for which I I I deeply admire him for maintaining most people are either just practical or they’re pie in the sky but Madison was able to do do both right and it it did go through you know Congress approved it because the few anti-federalist who were in Congress were horrified that it did not include certain things they wanted in the one

big thing they wanted would have eviscerated the power of the co Constitution they wanted that the government can’t do the federal government can’t do anything that is not expressly it’s a very important word expressly given to them in the Constitution so there would be no uh uh implied powers there would be no and they lost on that and then they passed it and it was so unimportant to the men at the time that when Jefferson is Secretary of State announced that it had been ratified by the states he announced it after more important things such as fishing rights had been approved and mean no one thought it was really very important it was symbolic and and it remains symbolic really until the 14th Amendment and even after that it’s not until the 20th century that judges begin to cite it in their cases extensively and then precedents are set that rely on the Bill of Rights uh so Madison did a good deed for us yes he did so uh the Revolutionary and and founding aspirations of of Liberty that we’ve discussed these American Creeds uh you know sometimes we’ve fallen short and and sometimes desperately short uh and and we’re not yet achieved for all people um and so in what ways was Liberty imperfectly achieved in America well it began falling very short when they talked about the American people the image conjured up was white men who owned a property that they essentialized fancy word that was the essential figure that they they envisioned certainly women did not I think one way to think about this is groups of Americans remained passive citizens uh they did not participate actively in governing or in choosing Governors women indentured servants tenant Farmers uh younger sons who didn’t own property certainly by race and and uh gender African-Americans Native Americans all these people were left out they were not considered um they were not considered qualified to be active participants in

this social contract and so from the very beginning that’s the case over time what’s interesting I often draw a timeline for my students and on that timeline I show them that one of the great engines of American history is the struggle to turn these groups into active citizens and the first one is all white men regardless of whether they own property the second one temporarily was black men after the American Civil War and I always give a big X when students write black people got the vote because black women did not and then in the 20th century women got the the vote and then in the Civil Rights Movement black people male and female once again got the right to vote so this is one of I think the great engines of our history and and it shows you a kind of um striving by these groups it didn’t just happen automatically oh GE we forgot you come on aboard oh come on aboard it it is one of the Great struggles in American society and it goes on to this day and I think that it stems from the fact that there stands the Bill of Rights and there stands the Constitution that says you are not living up to what what you claim is your Manifesto your Credo and and so that struggle goes on and hopefully we will reach a point where not only is it fully inclusive but there is no backtracking there is no you know here black men you can vote wait a minute no you can’t vote because we’ve introduced Jim Crow law so hopefully uh everyone will be active active citizens that’s what I think those of us who enshrine in our own minds the Constitution and the Bill of Rights uh hopefully Carol uh I want to thank you very much and we’ll end on that hopeful note uh and and I want to thank you very much for for joining us uh and we look forward to you joining us on Constitution day as well I’ll be there great so what questions or comments occur to you throughout this video please use the link below to send them directly to Dr Burke and me and we’ll answer them on Constitution Day in the meantime please check out our other videos we have specifically designed for Constitution Day including an analysis of the Constitution itself and why it is

relevant to students with Anastasia Bowden constitutional expert and Senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation also a trip to Mount Vernon to explore what historic structures can teach us about the complexity of our country’s founding and more so we’ll be exploring these issues all year so stay involved with us on social media and look out for many more events and ways to get involved thank you welcome one and all to the Bill of Rights institute’s uh Constitution Day live programming we are so excited to be here for our final session of the day these are some of my favorite people talking about some of my favorite things so make sure that you uh add your comments on our Channel and we’ll be able to get to them throughout the conversation today without further Ado it is my deep pleasure to introduce our final panelist today I’ll let them introduce themselves Mary thanks thanks Rachel hi everybody and happy Constitution Day I’m Mary Patterson and I work on the content team here at the Bill of Rights Institute and I am joined by my colleague and allaround great guy Gary kuty oh always too kind thanks so much Mary and it’s wonderful to see all of you out there I imagining students across the country who are watching uh and yes it’s a little unusual seeing us because you may be used to our voices on our podcast fabric of History uh but really the the exciting part of Constitution Day today is that we have Nick kadiche as our guest now there is far too much to say about Nick capad to so to do justice Nick do you mind telling us a little about yourself not in the slightest thank you Mary thank you Gary thank you Rachel uh lovely to see everybody today happy Constitution Day I was just telling Mary and Gary I was up till 1:30 arguing about it last night anyway uh I am the co-host and co-producer of a a podcast called Civics 101 out of New Hampshire Public Radio um real quickly it’s a it’s a it’s a podcast about how our government works and every episode we focus on one thing we’ve got about 200 episodes so far um and we do show you know we do episodes about different Supreme Court cases about understanding you know pieces of legislation we do an episode on all the branches of government all the foundational documents and uh we we like to slip little jokes in whenever we can into the credits or the episodes themselves so if you haven’t listened um you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts but um I’ve been working here for my goodness three four years and I am delighted to be talking with you folks today about some of my favorite stuff yeah absolutely ni we’re really excited that you’re here so as you heard Nick has a podcast Gary and I our name’s

Ryan we also have a podcast the fabric of History you can find all of our podcasts Stitcher Google podcast apple apple podcast wherever you get your favorite audio and we had this brilliant idea to join our podcast forces together for good in order Constitution Day and think about how what does the Constitution have to do with student rights so it turns out that the Supreme Court recently issued a decision that’s all about student expression right Gary absolutely yes uh the mahoi vbl case was one that Nick you joined us to talk about uh and to back up why we wanted to talk about it as Constitution Day is today we start with the Constitution with this this really set of big Concepts and big questions and Big Ideas so in speaking with you nick uh we talked about this case to say you know sometimes you need to kind of break it down and as you said focus on one thing so we really want to talk about students and the first amendments and from that you rightly said to talk about the Supreme Court cases and this specific one and get into those big questions so on our podcast uh you went into great de detail about it just as a very contextual what we’re talking about in mahoi vbl a a student uh she was 14 at the time um did not make the varsity cheer team uh and had issues with with soccer and whatnot um she went to Snapchat outside of school outside of the time of school uh and posted using some Choice phrases that I won’t repeat here uh about the situation uh this SnapChat was seen by a number of people got back to the coach and she was suspended for one year from the JV team that she was on so she was going for Varsity was on JV and that is where things happen so before even deciding the case this ra all the way to the Supreme Court I’m gonna put you on the spot Nick and say all right in this case what are the what are ways of looking at the big questions of the constitution in this particular case yeah that’s a wonderful question and not on the spot at all um and and I do just want to say if anybody who out there has comments or ideas or questions throw them in the chat we’d love to chat about them today before we go into the podcast itself um so yes if we’re talking about you know what should we be looking for um there are copious cases about free speech in school and you know and historically since the 1960s every Supreme Court decision is kind of zoomed in on a tiny little made speech in school a little more restrictive honestly um but when we’re looking at a free speech quote unquote violation we have to look at three things uh which are uh time place and manner so when did the speech happen where did the speech happen and the manner which is how did the speech happen this case um she was she was a student it was not in during school hours it was not at her school and in the manner was Snapchat um so the

question is can uh can BL who is the who is the petitioner of the respond in the case I believe the uh respondent in this case uh was her freedom of speech violated because she made this SnapChat outside of school hours and that’s the question um we all I’m a father you know and we are all I work a lot with teachers the idea of when we’re at school and when we’re not at school especially in remote learning has become quite nebulous so this is why this is such a fascinating case and that’s why I’m curious to what you all have to think about it uh because when are we in school and when are we not in school when we’re doing remote learning um and that’s why that’s one of the reasons why this case is just so gosh dar aren’t interesting absolutely so I think um another important part of we’re think about the time place and manner for this case is she’s on her personal cell phone like as you said she’s not at school it’s her personal cell phone and her snap is sent to her personal following so it’s that’s I think is the interesting part is that you have she’s not at school but she’s talking about school so was this disruptive so in past Supreme Court cases this disruption Factor is your speech disrupting school is definitely important part of the question and I think that’s what the Supreme Court was really focusing in on was was her speech disruptive enough to the point that the school was okay to limit Her speech your your point is valid about like the disruption and I want to just say one quick thing I won’t go into all the Supreme Court court cases that deal with student speech but um Tinker V de MO is the seminal you know fre Free Speech case Mary Beth Tinker is a personal hero of mine and that is when the disruption standard was was created 1969 but then as the years went by it’s not just disruption so also vulgar speech is uh can be prohibited in in school um also speech that uh you know if if you write for a school newspaper and the school doesn’t like what you’re writing that can be prohibitive that’s Hazelwood be kolm and then finally speech that Advocates drug use mors V Frederick that is also that can be prohibited in school so her speech was vulgar um be’s piece of speech was vulgar and it wasn’t Snapchat but um but like you said can it be considered disruptive and vulgar if it’s outside of school if it’s on her personal phone and for all of you out there who don’t like Supreme Court cases picture the nine stuffiest Supreme Court Justices you can talking about Snapchat and and cuss wordss on her cell phone it’s kind of delightful when modern-day technology and students really challenge the Supreme Court I like to think this those nine justices came out a lot better Having learned about what Snapchat is I think that’s a great point to to focus on again if you’re you’re out there in classrooms right now or perhaps watching this later on and you are a student uh what you’re seeing the way that we’re talking about this is that the constitution within it has

these big principles these big questions and then in your day-to-day life you can look at elements so Nick you’ve done a great job of saying when is it happening what is being said have there been uh examples before um I think a word that we use a lot is the word precedent uh and you’ve been talking about some of this before uh some of the other cases and so I think I for our students that idea of precedent is a really good way to research things could we talk a little more about how president teaches us a bit about um how to look at the Constitution when cases arise yeah that’s a fantastic I love talking about President um because uh president is not permanent you know when we say we cite precedent so how did the US rule before how did we what what last time we dealt with something similar to this how did we decide it and we’ll use that to determine how we should do things now and most Supreme Court decisions don’t just use one piece of President precedent they use up to 50 hundreds of pieces of precedent from previous relative Supreme Court cases and my favorite thing Gary Mary all of you out there is when the Supreme Court looks at old president and figures out we made a mistake what we decided in the past that maybe wasn’t necessarily accurate there’s a great Supreme Court case that deals with this and student speech it’s a pair of cases about whether or not students should be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance and salute the flag in the morning the first one was decided in the early 1940s Minersville vgo btis uh and the Supreme Court decided yes you must you must say the Supreme sorry the Pledge of Allegiance at school and you can be expelled if you don’t and just just a few years later the Supreme Court looked at that precedent and said you know what we made a little bit of a mistake uh refusing to salute the flag is protected by that very flag itself you know uh you have a constitutional right to not salute the flag if you if you choose not to so precedent is also nebulous and it can shift towards the betterment of who we are as a people which I think is very important I think one of the things about this case that I think is really interesting is that you alluded to this earlier Nick when you were talking about how there have been a lot of cases dealing with student expression that have been sort of limiting limiting limiting limiting speech but in this one all of the court so the lower courts and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the student and said you know she was perfectly within her right to say this so it was sort of a a broadening of of student speech and I think um I think that points to your point really well about President it’s not not permanent it’s shifting it’s changing it’s it can be fluid so I think that’s really interesting thing to keep in mind well there’s a fun vocab word for anybody out there which is um the we you know the mahano BL decision was what we call a narrow ruling and before I worked at Civics 101 I heard the word narrow ruling and I thought that meant it was

like a five to four decision like it was a real close one it was a squeaker in the Supreme Court that’s not what a narrow ruling means um when you read about a narrow ruling it’s that the justices write the opinion in such a specific way that it only pertains to this very particular case right so it pertains to students on their phone using SnapChat talking about perhaps Sports and extracurricular activities related to the school like it’s so specific that if another student in the future were to say some vulgar words on Twitter instead of Snapchat and it wasn’t about an extracurricular at school we’re going to be back in the court again in the in the court again um and you can cite you know mahano vbl as precedent but it ain’t going to be the same thing it’s a very narrow rul it’s been very helpful having uh having to help us build through how to look at these cases so just to go back again it is Constitution Day thinking about the Constitution a big idea and then goes to these something happens a case and you just said it may something may happen on Twitter on one day you may want to protest something on another day all these things may happen um interpretation of the Constitution then happens uh we started with a case meaning the case comes to the Supreme Court you mentioned presedent um and then we finally mentioned that there are decisions that are made right decisions were made in this case I believe it was eight to one I believe right so I think that’s another one the idea that in every case to look to opinions of the court because it’s not always nine to zero right is sometimes some division in some way you may have those who put out an opinion that is the dominant one you may have denters right those who say you know what I don’t agree with this and I have something to say about it um just for the purposes of today in Constitution Day is it possible to talk about one of the opinions specifically Justice Brier I think he had some really great things to talk about uh and maybe that can help our students uh think about how to look at opinions and what you’re looking for and what did he say what should we pay attention to yeah I there you taught me this yeah qu with me and I can’t stop thinking about it so you can go to town this there’s so many good quotes in this opinion and I know so again when they after they’ve made they’ve decided the case they are going to basically their opinion is saying why what’s their reasoning for their decision so like Gary said it’s 8 to1 and Justice Brier writes the opinion so he’s explaining the reasoning of the court and I’m going to read you just a really small part of this of his decision and he said the school itself has an interest in protecting a student’s unpopular expression especially when the expression takes place off campus America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy that’s such a good phrase the nurseries of democracy like Nursery like when you have a baby they’re in their own special room they get special care they’re being trained to be an adult so

our schools training us to be adults in a democracy that’s sort of how I interpret this quote so if you’re on Snapchat right now in your classroom which I know some of you are you are actually in the nursery of democracy you had no idea but there you are it’s training you for real life it’s such a good quote because I I can’t help but think Justice is whether you have difficulties with one Justice or another you know that is you know that’s you and cool um we have to be so careful when we are interpreting the Constitution when it comes to student rights I believe because of this uh if if if uh so there is a one you mentioned what the opinion and you mentioned Brier’s brilliant quote uh one of the desense in this this case one of the justices openly came out uh Clarence Thomas and said that um he believes that Tinker V de Mo which we consider the seminal Free Speech case is is unconstitutional that decision was wrong and that Tinker should be overturned um so I I I I think it’s very interesting that 50 years after Mary Beth tinker and John Tinker you know wore those black armbands that we are still being careful and we’re worried and we’re considerate about how we restrict or expand the rights of students in schools because they are nurseries of democracy this when it comes to schools in the Supreme Court universally the justice is right we have to be careful here because schools are the key to everything Brown V Board of Education in the opinion of one of the most important Supreme Court cases in US history you know they wrote out we students uh this is the gateway to to citizenry is school and if we get rid of that if we hurt that in any way we are messing up who we are as a people and I really appreciate that Brier touched in this seemingly innocuous case of using Snapchat and swear wordss we get to that brilliant quote that uh schools are the nurseries of democracy and I could not agree more I think that’s a great great quote I know many of you students out there are possibly thinking of questions and and have thoughts and feelings I I hope we do we’re talking about schools being nurseries of democracy it’s funny when we use the word Nursery I hadn’t immediately interpreted that as sort of plants you know like nurseries as in areas where you cultivate plants I feel like you know where you get trees and clearly I don’t go to them very often but I think you can get lots of of Life there and I think that’s just to focus on that that cultivation of how our culture comes out of schools right how these cases how how how rules are tested how expression happens and I think that leads to another question I’d like us to raise um around this which is um thinking about how we navigate in this modern Digital World the kinds of big questions right the the the ideas of rules and etiquette or etiquette is you know just that fancy term for for behaving in a way that’s acceptable with

others or we can even get into what that means but but I think how can we look to interpreting the Constitution all the things talking about to help us navigate um the digital world of today and and tomorrow it’s gonna happen in it’s gonna happen in our like there’s going to be a strong decision about privacy in students phones it’s gonna happen in our lifetime it’s gonna happen in your lifetime gentle students uh does the teacher have a right to unlock your phone for one reason or another um there’s a famous case about whether or not um you your your stuff can be searched can you know this is uh New Jersey versus TLO a case that’s near and dear to my heart young lady was smoking in the girls room uh it’s but it’s going to expand to the digital age the the famous quote in Tinker V de Mo in the opinion was the students rights to freedom of expression does not stop at the schoolhouse gate um what is the schoolhouse gate though the school does the schoolhouse gate extend to your cell phone does it extend to your use of internet at night in your home and I have no idea what the court is going to interpret uh we can only think and talk about it um and this is where I want to know what students think you know should your phone be yours should it should it should a teacher not have a right to unlock it and to look within it or only in ter in moments of dire safety you know you know what and what what instances should a teacher have a right to look inside your phone and your personal data it’s it’s a conversation we’re going to be having so we may as well start that that’s a great question and that’s actually a question that came in from the audience so that’s a natural transition to Q Anda I love it when the world or organizes itself that way the question is just that how do you think this decision will affect the student the future of student free speech in light of the constantly changing technology and I think this is something that you see the courts are kind of a lagging indicator on right the schools are going to be figuring this out they’re going to be testing Solutions and then the courts will come along behind and try and say oh well no that’s the limit of privacy or oh no no that’s the limit of where your ability to monitor is um but I think we are going to see a lot of kind of attempts by different school districts by different um by different different uh States on how to address these questions but so what do you guys think how how do you think this case will affect the future of student free speech in light of the constantly changing technology well I was just going to say I think it’s it’s interesting to remember so we look we look to the courts for decisions on these issues about big questions like expression and things like that but that’s not the only like source of authority we have local school boards you have ptas you have student government associations in your school you have a voice in other ways right the Supreme Court are nine justices their

average age I think is 64 and they’re not elected right they’re appointed so they’re know they’re approved by Congress these checks and balances and action but um it’s not so I I think that’s a great question I feel like I’m punting a little bit on this question just like they do yeah yeah yeah I learned from the best my students so I think um but I do think that’s worth keeping in mind is that you know going to the Supreme Court is we don’t do that every single time there is an issue will it come to the court I think absolutely as you guys are saying but um this isn’t the only place where we’re going to see this question absolutely and actually our friend Miss Gordon from South Carolina is back in our in our chat today hi Miss Gordon’s class Gord um so Javari wants us to wants another explanation can we talk a little bit more about that idea of a nursery of democracy can we flesh that out a little bit more he didn’t quite understand what we were saying and I think it is such such an important idea for what is the purpose of school in a Democratic Republic yeah Nick do you want to take this one so we did an episode called life we did a series called I’ll be quick we did a series Jamari called life stages school and it was all about how can the government intrude or you know uh get involved with you in school and the answer is is that school unlike anything just about almost everything else there there there is no federal involvement there’s very little Federal involvement about what can and can’t happen in your school right and constantly this question gets brought up in these cases of what is the purpose of school and I think what Brier is saying is that the purpose of school is to create good citizens uh thinking citizens kind citizens good Americans whatever you want to call it and if we endanger that then we are doing something disastrous to our nation um I am a personal Advocate that Civics and government and social studies and English and literature if you stop doing and researching those things then we are hurting democracy we are hurting the future of the United States the goal of schools in my opinion should be to Foster Good Wonderful citizens to make a better tomorrow um school is not just a place to make automatons or to teach people science and math now schools are a place to create good citizens as well that I think that might be what he’s saying what do you guys think yeah I mean I couldn’t agree more you have taught me as well in this conversation uh the value of looking at the constitution in terms of what is going on around you the more that you’re familiar not only with the Constitution but with that word precedent or other opinions um I think can only bolster your own perspective on what you experience on a day-to-day and you might see that there are things that are worth

your voice and I think we’ve learned that in this conversation Mary I just want to add so I think if you’re in a nursery that means you’re sort of in the training ground for what comes next so the nursery of democracy you’re in school you’re going to encounter things that you don’t like or you don’t agree with so the school district the coaches didn’t like this students snap because it was saying bad things about the school but in a democracy and buyer goes on to say you have to have this Marketplace of ideas you have to be exposed to different ideas to different opinions you’re not always going to like what you hear but you have to be be able to function and respond to ideas that you don’t like to make sure our democracy works so you’re in the nursery of democracy now that means real democracy right without your teachers and the bells is coming your way soon so a school is such an important part of our Lives to practice these skills of responding to people we don’t like and trying to work out our differences and and learning new things yeah having the space to do all of that and Bri is always here to support those kinds of activities Nick we put a link to that episode in the chat on the YouTube stream for this so that’s already taken care of and I just want to say thank you to all of you the hosts of br’s fabric of History our fabulous guest host of civics 101 Nick kidichi thank you for everything you do to help bring life to Civics and history for students Educators and history enthusiasts across the across the airwaves um so thank you very much for being here up next we have a replay of the podcast that you can listen to We Have It video recorded so you can see all all the fun facial expressions that this crew makes um and then it join us at 250 Eastern 11:50 Pacific and we’re going to have the whole staff of the Bill of Rights Institute close out Constitution Day live here in Arlington Virginia we’ll see you soon thank you very much thanks everyone see you later thanks Nick hey everybody welcome to a very special episode of the fabric of History I’m your host Mary Patterson and as ever I am joined by one of my favorite colleagues Gary klei oh hi but thank you yes happy Constitution Day everybody so as you can imagine for employees of the Bill of Rights Institute the Constitution is a pretty big deal and when September 17th rolls around that’s Constitution Day we jump on the opportunity to talk about how the Constitution affects our lives this this year we’re celebrating Constitution Day by exploring the ways Liberty and equality interact in the Constitution and how we continue to balance these principles in our lives for this special episode of the fabric of History we’re exploring how the Constitution connects with student expression in the 21st century and to help us out we are Beyond excited to be joined by Nick capiche of the Civics 101 podcast Nick thank you so

much for being with us today Mary and Gary the pleasure is absolutely more than half mine delighted to be here on this day of days Constitution Day so if you have not checked out the Civics 101 podcast I highly recommend that you do it’s a podcast refresher course on the basics of how democracy works not only are we big fans of the Constitution but we’re super huge fans of democracy and they cover everything from Magna Carta it’s a moving day at the White House so it’s it’s really a great listen so again check it out and again we’re super happy that you’re with us the road of admiration goes two ways Mary thank you so much so as you guys watch this video think of questions that you’d like to ask Nick Gary and I Nick will be back with us on Constitution Day to answer your questions live and you can follow the link below to submit questions and receive a variety of useful resources videos e-lessons on the Constitution as we lead up to the day itself so let’s jump in shall we I’m ready to go all right so Gary you are very big on this idea of taking things for granted or I think that that’s something you’ve you’ve mentioned on our podcast before and I think that am I’m sorry am I a fan of taking things for granted you mean like looking at things that we take for granted and exploring it deeper I think gotcha gotcha yes I am a fan of that so I think the Constitution is one of those things right because I I know I don’t wake up in the morning and go oh my God I’m so excited that we have the First Amendment but in reality maybe I should because you know the freedom of expression and the other rights enshrined in that first amendment they’re incredibly powerful but if you are talking about school and social media then it starts to get messy and we do love a good messy um situation to talk through here on this podcast Absol on a day like today as well sort of focusing I mean that’s a big question that’s our our our our our we’re big fans of the big questions but drilling down even more into what does it mean for students I think is a great question you had asked that before right so if it’s Constitution Day well what does that mean for student expression and and in their lives and I’m so glad Nick is here because I think even starting with that I mean where in the Constitution you know where can we go to the Constitution to think more about these things to not take for granted about students and their their rights of expression yeah I think about this all the time uh we were we did an episode on the Bill of Rights and we were delighted to have Dr Bob from The Bill of Rights Institute on that episode as well as a wonderful scholar named Woody Holton um it’s a funny contrast because you know Dr Bob is all about the Bill of Rights in the First Amendment and Woody Holton whom I love in a bit of a waggish way referred to the Bill of Rights as a tub to a whale you know it’s a thing that happened but you know nobody really thought about it at the time and yet it has become my favorite part of the

Constitution I dare say many people out there watching this and the First Amendment uh was my gateway to Civics was studying the first amendment in college um so it has become this big thing but the question to question Gary like where in the constitution does it say you know students have or don’t have freedom of expression um nowhere I I don’t believe the word student is even in the Constitution and these uh amendments which we hold so dear were not actually no laws were stru struck down for being unconstitutional in regards to the First Amendment until the 1920s and that blew my mind when I first learned that it was until you know shank gito and Whitney and other of these cases in the 1920s that people started to say well this speech is constitutional this speech could be considered uh you know not protected uh by the Constitution and it’s only through the interpretation of the Constitution from the Supreme Court that we do have a definition of speech specifically also when it comes to students okay so starting with the foundation of the of questions about the Constitution and as you rightly said um you know you have to get to interpretation I’m hearing look to Supreme Courts look to I love the word cases when it comes to Supreme Court right it’s what’s the case like it’s a particular thing but it’s about something bigger um and so I guess I mean is it a given that we’re talking about students we’re talking you know they are citizens they have voices that’s something that you know I know in our our programs the big thing that we talk about is you know we we want to hear from students we you know they they have things to say and do and express themselves so what I’m hearing if I’m if I’m correct is let’s look to some Supreme Court cases yeah shine a light on this big question let’s see how we got here I would love to do that okay I think a really good Point of Departure for us is very recent Supreme Court ruling in the mahoi area school district very good choice yeah so this is um this case is all about well before we get it’s about First Amendment and can you Pro can public school officials regulate off campus student speech so this is I think where it gets messy because especially in you know today’s world where is the line between being on campus and being off campus so before I get before I get ahead of myself let me let’s lay out just the basic facts of the case here so this the decision was issued in June of 2021 so again very recent case W and what happens is a student uh she was a cheerleader in the mahoi area high school she posted a Snapchat video where she was basically she was upset because she didn’t make the Varsity tring squad so you know she’s 14 years old and as you can imagine I know I was kind of dramatic as a myself she’s very upset and in this SnapChat she says you know she’s talking negatively about school about cheerleading about her coaches and it’s

a Snapchat and she’s off campus and it’s not during school hours but other students show the Snapchat to the coaches and because of this she is um suspended from the squad and she’s you know she gets in trouble so her father and her end up you know challenging the school and then they end up bringing it to court saying this violated Her First Amendment rights and I think what’s really I mean there’s so many things that are interesting about this so I’m not sure where to go first but ultimately what the Supreme the Supreme Court rules in favor of the cheerleader and says that um punishing her violated Her First Amendment rights so those are the very basic basic basic facts of the case well the one thing we maybe should throw in there is that she wasn’t just speaking negatively about the cheerleading team but she used some rather uh harsh expl that I would have been punished in school for using at the time too so you know that’s just one more thing to sort of keep in the in the back balance of it but to your point I think the most important thing is uh sort of when this happened and how this happened what time of day this happened for uh the cheerleader I mean I think that brings up a great Point again for those watching and perhaps you’re already developing some questions here Nick I was wondering if you could help us out with if we’re going to be utilizing Supreme Court cases to shine a light on the con stition and what it does are there elements within cases we should take a look at even in this particular case that can help us kind of see more clearly the different things we should be looking for yeah that’s a what what a what a great thing to ask um there is a a great Trio of words that we sort of think about when we think about Supreme Court cases and protections of speech in particular uh in speech it’s the uh time place and manner of speech the old TPM so when when you make the thing of speech the place where you do it and the manner you know so this is we’re exploring the time place and manner so when did our cheerleader make that snap uh sorry snap that chat uh where was she when she snapped that chat and and what was the manner so it was outside of school hours um it was I imagine that in her home and the manner was on Snapchat so you take all those things into into question because schools are allowed to police speech uh while students are in school and we can talk more about that a little bit down the line but those are the things you want to kind of consider and that these justices were considering when they handed down this decision so that’s really important if I can jump in on that in terms of we you mentioned before sort of past experiences right past cases that sort of w this down I mean that that phrase the time place and manner I also don’t know that that’s in the Constitution necessar that’s true right and so it came about so so I’m wondering if it’s

worth sort of backtracking and say like how did we even get to that in the first place yeah um should we go back to I mean how far back should we go Gary Mary where do you want to go to the dawn of time I don’t I think if if we want to explore this sort of chronologically we can sort of go through student speech cases and sort of investigate that and talk about that and see what yall think about and if anybody out there has any questions or thoughts about this I we would love to hear it because this is how you explore this issue I think I mean I think Tinker is the case I mean it’s not the first case dealing with student speech but I think that it’s sort of the landmark case like I know even before I was an employee of the Bill of Rights Institute that’s one of the core cases I just remember from learning in school I feel like most people are familiar with that case and it’s it’s kind of a big deal it sets a big precedent so maybe that’s a good place to start sure yeah you want to talk about Tinker sure it’s my favorite Supreme Court case it’s my now we have to um for anybody who hasn’t heard of Tinker V de Mo then welcome because that’s how I was when I started working at Civics 101 I had not heard of Tinker vi de Mo I did not know any rules about Supreme Court uh decisions when it came to student speech and now I am I consider myself a friend of Mary Beth Tinker um Mary Beth Tinker her brother John and a colleague of there’s at school Chris Evert I believe was his name they uh joined a planned protest this was in 19 in the late 1960s during the Vietnam war they wore black armbands to school to protest the deaths on both sides in the Vietnam War Mary and her Mary Beth and her brother John wore Quakers they abhor violence in any way shape or form in any time place and Manner and uh they wore these armbands to school and the teachers warned them they could not wear black armbands to school and they wore them any way um and so the ACLU got in touch with the Tinkers and they fought their case up to the Supreme Court and the question was uh can you wear a black armband in protest while you’re at school and the Court ruled and I believe it was 7even to two that yes um students do have a right to free speech while they’re at school with one very large stipulation which is it can’t be disruptive um but I love so much about Tinker V Mo um one is that John and Mary Beth to this day Mary Beth was 13 in the 1960s when she wore that arm band of school so you know you can be 13 and make a huge difference a court case that people are fighting about to this day um she was 13 she wore this arm band at school she now tours the country talking about why it’s important that students have a right to freedom and expression when they’re at school she’s made that her her personal Crusade John as well um and uh not everybody was down with it you know uh the one of the great quotes I thought was interesting is I believe

it was Justice black who descended who said he was scared that it was going to usher in a revolutionary New Era of permissiveness um which is you know oh heaven for vend you know the students you have feel like that they can contribute when it comes to speech you know I say you know unabashed Mary Gary to all of you out there yes bring on the revolutionary era of permissiveness I want to hear whatever everyone has to say because as Mary Beth says students she says kids we can say kids students you whomever have a tremendous ability to see what is unfair more than I do more than we three here in this room today students kids my kids my goodness yes they can spot unfairness a thousand miles away they are a wonderful Bell weather for you know determining what’s going on in the world and what’s fair and unfair so that was a great case right Tinker de Mo was kaboo students have speech in school as long as it’s not disruptive and as the years progressed uh the courts ruled and sort of winnowed away at that uh that and and said well this kind of speech is not permitted and this kind of speech is not permitted and this kind of speech is not permitted and through goodness me 50 years we get here where a Snapchat video uh if if I’m not wrong the uh mahoi case is the first Victory the extension of students rights in the the Supreme Court since Tinker VY in 1969 I think I think so Tinker well there’s a couple things come to mind I know this is our thinking faces our thinking people never usually see our thinking faces on our podcast I will say my this quick comment though I I love I love that the Tinkers are still you know they they really are even to this day talking about students and expression and and you know making a stand for for what you feel is right because I think so often we hear about a court case and we’re like oh that happened then and it doesn’t really matter anymore and you know a lot of these Supreme Court cases that you get dled out in school they did Happ but a long time ago but here’s an example of someone who was very young like 13 is is quite young yeah made it you know this was has a huge impact even to this day but it didn’t stop there like the story continues so I love that part of the story because that’s something we don’t often hear the other thing that’s really the phrase that comes out of Tinker that I think is really interesting and relevant to the mahoi case and even Beyond and what may be what come next is that students do not quote shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate end quote so I think it’s this Schoolhouse gate that is that’s that’s what’s getting messy like it’s if your speech is disruptive if it’s you know like if it’s really harmful or if it’s sexually explicit which has happened in some other court cases that came to the

Supreme Court then to me like as a as a mom and as a former teacher I feel like that makes sense to kind of shut some of that speech down but in the case of Tinker it was it was you know it was something very simple it was just wearing the black armband so like I went in a lot of places there no I love that I love thinking exploring like the gate has gotten quite wide hasn’t it when does the gate begin again um when does the gate end students who are who are teach be learning remotely is your home within the schoolhouse gate now um students who are involved in extracurricular activities after school if you’re texting your friend about a play that you’re in you know is that are you still in the gate or are you out of the gate and people who are working from home we feel the same way you know you’re you’re never not at work and you’re never you’re always at work at the same time same with school when we’re doing more remote learning so I I think this decision this precedent it’s gonna it’s got to come up again and again and again as we’re reinvestigating where that gate Mary begins and ends so to drive back to where we started about the Constitution we we’ve mentioned a couple of cases and these cases when they were occurring may seem very different in one it is a young person who has thoughts on a war that was happening at the time a conflict and ways of protesting that or calling attention to it and the other it was a a personal event that for our point of view is modern but you know is happening today that uh you was happening personally but was trying to express themselves through a technology that did not exist decades ago they may on the surface seem differently different from each other and yet we are talking to them as connected because these cases help us better understand the Constitution and how it applies to students right so I I suppose one you know wrap up big question I’m I’m thinking about is is that how it generally works is is our understanding of the Constitution pieced together from Individual experiences or do we start with the big ideas of the Constitution and apply them to these individual experiences or both well when you read when you read a Supreme Court decision right when you read a Supreme Court decision what you’re really going to be looking at is precedent you’re going to look at other cases that have been cited and the older we get as a nation the more President we have to look at um and I you know Gary I it’s easy it’s easy for me to lionize Mary Beth tinker and to take our cheerleader case and be like yeah but this was someone just sort of using curse words on Snapchat to say they’re complet two completely different worlds I love that someone using uh dropping bad words on Snapchat has given the same sort of constitutional you know judicial weight

as somebody protesting death in a war because that’s that’s how the Constitution works it it applies to everybody and everything tlov New Jersey you got a 14-year-old girl smoking a butt in the girl’s room and having a bag of weed in her purse um Mary but Tinker wears an armband Hazelwood V kolm uh Sor Hazelwood v kolm um she writes about teen pregnancy in her newspaper Matthew Frasier makes a rude speech in front nominating his friend for uh you know student council I just wanted to say that all these cases regardless of if they seem of great import or not are part of who we are as a nation when we’re investigating how the Constitution applies to us I I will piggyback on that Nick I think that there was a in the decision in mahoi uh justice Stephen Brier wrote the majority and he had this wonderful quote about um our cheerleader he said it might be tempting to dismiss Levy Randy Levy was her name the cheerleader it might be tempting to dismiss lovey’s words as Unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein but sometimes it is necessary to protect Superfluous or you know the seemingly silly like this rant on Snapchat in order to preserve the necessary so I think I we talk about these these foundational principles these founding principles here at B like Liberty equality your first men of protections they are these sort of ideals these standards that we’re always using as our our guidepost and you’re right sometimes it’s you know protesting a war that was terrible I mean all wars are terrible but protesting a war and sometimes it’s complaining it’s this rude crude juvenile rant about not making the varsity cheerleading squad and so they see as you said one doesn’t seem so much a heavyweight as the other but it’s still it’s still your freedom of expression right and I think um the ruling in mahoi basically it is protecting that sometimes kids say things that are on popular but you’re still you still have that right to express yourself with restrictions but this was a case in which you know she was off campus and they they mean the decision was um the lower court rulle ruled in her favor as well and the decision was 8 to one so most of the justices sort of across the Spectrum with it so I think that’s to me that’s that’s part of the fun of it is that we have these principles that have been that are they’re they’re like Eternal in a way and it’s just how do we interpret them how do we apply them things always can fit underneath them and I think that’s sort of the beauty of the document itself whether you’re talking about the Constitution or whether you’re talking about Bill of Rights and in a bit more of a like fun side note way it’s also quite beautiful that these judges mostly around the age of 60 and older learned a lot about

Snapchat very quickly learned a lot about cheerleading um and you know there are some funny quotes of these justices sort of talking about what she did and how she should be punished or not punished but you mentioned Justice Brier I think Mary you and I were talking a little earlier there was a quote and I hope I get it right uh that you told me about Justice Brer saying that classrooms are nurseries of democracy is that what it was yes that I went to sleep last night thinking about that expression I can’t stop thinking about it cause um oh yeah go ahead I was just gonna say like you guys listening out there in school you are in the nursery of democracy right now and that’s meaning where things are developing and right yeah yeah yeah and I was recently did an episode on Brown V Board of Education and um the judge I was interviewing mentioned the the quote that um education is the very Foundation of good citizenship that came from Earl Warren’s opinion in brownview Board of Education you know school you know you can look at as as drudgery and a chore but then in your heart of hearts you are truly it is the Cornerstone of citizenship it is the nursery of democracy of figuring out civics you know one of my soapbox things is that Civics isn’t just how a bill becomes a law and the difference between the house and the Senate Civics starts when you’re one year old Civic starts when you learn how to share toys with your brother Civic starts when you learn what you can say and not say in kindergarten and it never stops it sounds to me like with the question is what the const what does the Constitution have to do with student expression I feel like everything a lot I would from what you’re saying it sounds like well student Express has a lot to do with the Constitution and all the different choices and the things that on a day-to-day level it sounds like is it’s everywhere that’s sometimes what makes it hard to see but if you take a few moments to look you could see it in classrooms right now that you yourselves are sitting in so that was excellent that was excellent yeah I mean I think we we’ve come to this conclusion before on the fabric of history but what you say matters where you say it how you say it so I mean you may not have a Supreme Court case I mean you might not be in a Supreme Court case in your lifetime but you’re still a citizen and so you’re still like a fabric you’re part of this fabric our society so you matter and you have a right to express yourself and then but there are limits on that and that is that’s the fun and that’s that’s the discussion so so because you are citizens in the fabric of our society we want to know what questions or comments occur to you as you’re watching this video use the link below and send them directly to us and we’ll answer them and talk through them on Constitution Day

live in the meantime check out our other videos we’ve designed for Constitution Day including an analysis of the Constitution itself and why it is relevant to students a trip to Mount Vernon to explore what historic structures can teach us about the complexity of our country’s founding and more we’ll be exploring these issues all year so stay involved with us on social media look out for more events and ways to get involved be sure to like And subscribe to our Channel you have to check out Civics 101 to hear Nick and his co-host Hannah they’re amazing so again Nick thank you so much oh thank you Mary thank you Gary this has been an absolute Delight yeah thanks it’s been thanks for spending some time with us in Constitution Day anytime all right we’ll see you on Constitution Day everybody until then keep asking questions thank you so much for joining us here at the Bill of Rights Institute for Constitution Day live today is about the Constitution but it’s also about you the Constitution is for you and it lives through you so from all of us here here at the Bill of Rights Institute we want to wish you a very happy Constitution Day