# data[].attributes.body
Here is the text of the D.O.I.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is the text of the Constitution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Section 1

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Constitution - Full Text | The National Constitution Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is the text of the Bill of Rights & Other Amendments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution. The 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the amendments is on display in the Rotunda in the National Archives Museum. Ten of the proposed 12 amendments were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on December 15, 1791. The ratified Articles (Articles 3-12) constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, or the U.S. Bill of Rights. In 1992, 203 years after it was proposed, Article 2 was ratified as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. Article 1 was never ratified.

Transcription of the 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress Proposing 12 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Article the first... After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Article the second... No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Article the third... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Article the fourth... A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Article the fifth... No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Article the sixth... 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 affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article the seventh... No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Article the eighth... In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Article the ninth... In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Article the tenth... Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Article the eleventh... The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Article the twelfth... The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
ATTEST,
Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, Speaker of the House of Representatives
John Adams, Vice-President of the United States, and President of the Senate
John Beckley, Clerk of the House of Representatives.
Sam. A Otis Secretary of the Senate
Amendments 11-27
The U.S. Bill of Rights

Note: The following text is a transcription of the first ten amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the "Bill of Rights."

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

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 affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Amendments 11-27
Note: The capitalization and punctuation in this version is from the enrolled original of the Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the Bill of Rights, which is on permanent display in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.
Back to Main Bill of Rights Page

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
get-content name="print-page-left" include-tag="false" /] Note: The following text is a transcription of the enrolled original of the Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the Bill of Rights, which is on permanent display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article defining freedom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint, and the absence of a despotic government.

Here are the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

(Image credit: © Rael Daruszka Dreamstime.com)

Freedom of the press prohibits the government from interfering with the printing and distribution of information or opinions. It can be limited by libel and copyright laws, and it doesn't include the act of news gathering.

Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political freedom and a civil liberty. This freedom can be limited by laws that protect public safety.

Freedom of expression includes freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition. This freedom doesn't extend to expression that defames, causes panic, creates fighting words, incites people to crime, creates sedition, or is obscene.

Freedom of speech is the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference. The right doesn't extend to hate speech, advertising, child pornography, and a few other instances.

Freedom of religion is the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. This right extends to any religious belief, but not in the practice of all religious activities (for example, ones that involve breaking other laws).

Related:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint, and the absence of a despotic government.

# data[].attributes.headline
Are Americans the Freest People in the World?

# data[].attributes.subject
Are Americans the Freest People in the World?

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article questioning whether America is actual the freest country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Are Americans the freest people in the world? - BBC Reel

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For almost 200 years, authors have travelled to the United States to write memoirs and observations on the very idea of America. What makes this country unique? Why is it so different from any other? As the US election approaches, we take a virtual cross-country trip and ask our American friends fundamental questions around Americanness.

# data[].attributes.headline
10 Reasons the U.S. is No Longer the Land of the Free

# data[].attributes.subject
10 Reasons the U.S. is No Longer the Land of the Free

# data[].attributes.body
Here is a list of reasons why America is no longer "free."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own - the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don't operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of "free," but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens - precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for "prolonged detention.")

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searches

The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens' finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use "national security letters" to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens - and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

Secret evidence

The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security - a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government's actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.

The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)

Secret court

The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)

Immunity from judicial review

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)

Continual monitoring of citizens

The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)

Extraordinary renditions

The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers - including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.

These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.

Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that "free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war." Of course, terrorism will never "surrender" and end this particular "war."

Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: "That is a decision which we leave where it belongs - in the executive branch."

And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?" His response was a bit chilling: "A republic, Madam, if you can keep it."

Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.

Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

Read more from Outlook, including:

"Imagining a world without Gitmo," by Karen J. Greenberg.

"A world without 9/11: No President Obama, more China trouble, same debt crisis," by Michael Lind.

"Five myths about Dick Cheney," by Stephen F. Hayes.

Friend Outlook on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations√ around the world. Iran, for example, has been criti...

# data[].attributes.headline
What Americans Are Finally Learning About Freedom

# data[].attributes.subject
What Americans Are Finally Learning About Freedom

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article explaining what Americans NOW know about freedom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Americans are supposedly a freedom-loving people. This, we tell ourselves, is why we rose up against the British, and founded a new country "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Yet Americans are in fact an extraordinarily unfree people, oppressed and downtrodden on all sides, and have generally just sat and taken it. This is in part because our typical notion of freedom, based entirely around the ability of the individual to do what he or she wants free of government interference, is a preposterous fiction. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that freedom from government is the highest ideal, when in fact government is the only way that any kind of freedom can be realized.

America's fraudulent notion of freedom emerges from philosophers like Isaiah Berlin who attempted to make a distinction between negative and positive liberty. Libertarians like the Cato Institute's Aaron Ross Powell have popularized and simplified this conception, and he explains it roughly as the difference between "freedom from" and "capacity to." Thus one has negative liberty (freedom from) if the government doesn't do things like suppress your speech, and one has positive liberty (capacity to) if one has the actual capability (like money) to do what one desires.

But this distinction collapses on close scrutiny. Consider the economy, which of necessity sets the conditions of daily life. People need food, water, clothing, and shelter to live their lives. For this they must have a job or some other source of income - obtained in an economic system that cannot help but be based on the foundation of government laws and rules imposed on the people. There cannot be any "freedom from" a state decision about how to set up the economy, and therefore how to distribute resources.

Ross argues against things like taxes because "in order to give some people the resources they need to get what they want, it must take those resources from others." In reality, ownership of resources is itself a state legal construct which could be changed at any time. Ownership is not a relationship between a person and an object, it is a relationship between people - if I own something, it means I have the legal right to call the police or sue if someone tries to take it without my permission. In other words, access to the state's violent authority is what it means to own something - so if the tax rate on Warren Buffet's capital gains income goes up, that means the taxed portion no longer belongs to him.

More broadly, whether any dollar of income goes to one person or another depends almost entirely on how the state has constructed and shaped the economy, through its laws on property, corporations, labor, taxes, welfare, finance, and so forth. Today, the vast majority of Americans get their daily bread through a production system which is rigged against them in a hundred obvious ways. Wages have been stagnant for decades thanks to anti-union laws, declining taxes on the rich (indeed, the ultra-wealthy now pay a lower rate of tax than the poor), slanted trade deals, and other mechanisms by which the rich funnel money to the top. We pay a great deal of tax but receive little for it in the way of social services. Welfare benefits are meager, with the explicit intention of starving people into accepting low wages and making profits for the rich.

America's extreme inequality is, in other words, a priori evidence of a vast and implacable tyranny - a nation of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent.

Critics of negative liberty sometimes say a positive version is better. And most people would agree that it would be good to set up a society in which everyone has plenty of time and money to do whatever they feel like doing. But to actually achieve this, Americans must squarely face the fact that it can be done solely through collective decisions about which kind of society is just, imposed by force of law.

Nevertheless, an especially blinkered, individualist sense of negative liberty has won out in the popular American consciousness. For Americans, freedom basically means the ability to go about one's business free of government "meddling." We see this in its most extreme form in anti-mask protests, whereby conservatives portray themselves as the victims of government tyranny because of regulations implemented to control the pandemic.

This makes no sense even on its own terms, for even advocates of negative liberty admit that one cannot be free to do harm to another, and the main function of a mask is to prevent infecting others. But this idea can still be seen in the way that Americans tend to react to a turn of bad luck: by blaming themselves. According to our notion of freedom, you are free to do what you want, but you are not entitled to help doing it. Therefore, if you don't have a job or income, it must be your fault. Even when it is undeniable that misfortune is the result of a general calamity (like today) Americans still struggle to muster the appropriate response of a furious demand for state relief.

It is not just the economy where the inherently collective nature of freedom is manifest. Our freedom of travel has been radically constrained for the indefinite future because President Trump has done almost nothing to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Other countries recognized that defeating the virus required a big collective sacrifice and state action - by putting their lives on hold, and accepting drastic limitations on their activities, Germans, New Zealanders, and Italians helped contain the outbreaks in their countries, and thus gave their governments time to mobilize frantically and build systems to keep the virus contained, which they did. All those peoples are now getting their previous lives back, because that was the only way it could be done.

Now, most Americans also did the right thing in the pinch. But many did not. Worse, the Republican Party has been drinking the "government equals tyranny" turpentine for so long it is now completely unable to think or act, and the Democrats still reflexively hesitate to deploy state power. As a result, most of that sacrifice was squandered, over 140,000 people and counting are dead, and America is now a plague land, its disease-ridden citizens shunned around the world.

So the fraudulent American sense of freedom in practice shows a twofold character: On the one hand, there is a staggering sense of entitlement on the far right, which screams itself hoarse over whatever government regulation it happens to disagree with - rarely howling about actual violations of civil liberties, like police lawlessness or the NSA dragnet surveillance program, but instead typically things that would help the poor or the sick. On the other hand, there is an incredible docility among most of the rest of the population, which expects almost nothing from government, and generally gets exactly that. As Alex Pareene writes at The New Republic, liberal New Yorkers are largely happy and contented with the performance of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who so horrendously botched the response to the coronavirus outbreak that 32,000 of his constituents are dead. He faces no groundswell of infuriated demands for accountability, and thus expresses no shame about his monumental failure.

In most rich democracies, in fact, any of about a dozen ways the American state ignores or injures its people would cause widespread furious outrage. When the centrist government of Finland attempted to cut the wages of a few hundred postal workers last year, sympathy strikes toppled the prime minister. When French President Emmanel Macron attempted to cut public pensions, he faced a transport strike and multiple waves of furious mass protest; the reforms have been shelved until next year at the earliest.

All that said, our current upside-down idea of freedom is not the only one in American history. Probably the most remarkable example is the roughly 200,000 Black Americans, many of them former slaves, who took up arms to defeat the Confederate slave empire. These men fought not only to strike off the chains of their own race, but also to make the United States a place that lived up to its founding principles for all its citizens. They fought and died for a country that a few years previously had been perfectly willing to see them left in bondage indefinitely - and without their strength, the traitors may not have been beaten. To get their freedom, they had to help take it by force.

We see that older American spirit of freedom today in the Black Lives Matter protests, which have seen tens of millions of Americans of all races and backgrounds participating. It is perhaps a glimmering of a new militant realization that only through collective action - coordinated above all through state power - can we actually experience anything like the freedom America supposedly stands for. With some luck, American politicians will once again come to fear their constituents, as they should.

A free people does not take injustice lying down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Americans are finally learning about freedom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Americans are supposedly a freedom-loving people. This, we tell ourselves, is why we rose up against the British, and founded a new country "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Yet Americans are in fact an extraordinarily unfree people, oppressed and downtrodden on all sides, and have generally just sat and taken it.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article featuring the truth about equality in America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Truth About Equality in America Today

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Writers, leaders and activists on the meaning of the March on Washington, and the state of equality now

# data[].attributes.body
This article explores the question about whether America is fair or not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How can you solve a problem if you can't see it? A recent study by Yale researchers compared beliefs about racial economic equality with the reality estimated by economic population data. They found that Americans think our society is much fairer in terms of how wealth and income are shared across racial groups than what the numbers indicate. These overly optimistic perceptions may help explain why the wealth and income gaps persist.

In "Americans misperceive racial economic equality," Michael W. Kraus of Yale SOM; Jennifer A. Richeson, the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale; and Julian M. Rucker, a doctoral candidate at Yale, write, "Our results suggest a systematic tendency to perceive greater progress toward racial economic equality than has actually been achieved."

For instance, one question in the study asked: "For every $100 earned by an average white family, how much do you think was earned by an average black family in 2013?" The average respondent guessed $85.59, meaning they thought black families make $14.41 less than average white families. The real answer, based on the Current Population Survey, was $57.30, a gap of $42.70. Study participants were off by almost 30 points.

The gap between estimate and reality was largest for a question about household wealth. Participants guessed that the difference between white and black households would be about $100 to $85, when in reality it's $100 to $5. In other words, study participants were off by almost 80 points. Participants were also overly optimistic about differences in wages and health coverage.

Compounding the problem, when quizzed on whether the country has gotten more equal over recent decades, participants overestimated the degree of progress by more than 20 points.

Michael Kraus argues that these misperceptions fit conveniently with the idea of the American dream-that every individual, regardless of background, can succeed with talent and hard work. "Those beliefs can lead us astray, can lead us to not see the world for what it is. There's a lot of work that still needs doing if our economic reality is going to match up with our narratives of opportunity."

The study points to two likely mechanisms behind the excessive optimism. One is a belief that society is generally fair. People who held such a belief tended to overestimate the level of economic equality in America more than others. High-income white participants were most likely to both hold the view that society is fair and to overestimate economic equality relative to low-income white participants and black participants across the income distribution.

A second relevant factor was a person's diversity of social networks. In particular, black participants with higher self-reported social network diversity were more accurate in their estimates of racial equality.

According to Kraus, this work helps shine a light on the challenge of achieving greater economic fairness in American society. "A more honest assessment of what our society looks like, as painful as those conversations might be, will lead us to see the world for what it is and may actually actively lead us to have the kinds of policy discussions that will ultimately solve these problems."
Q: What did you learn through this study?
The biggest takeaway is that people in general in American society are overly optimistic about how much we share economic resources between different demographic groups. Our study is about black Americans and white Americans. Participants in our study estimated that things are relatively fair in terms of economic outcomes, but in fact, when you look at the best estimates based on publicly available economic data, you find wide chasms in terms of income and wealth disparities between black and white Americans. Those chasms have been huge for decades. And our participants in the studies think that those divides are smaller and that they're naturally closing.
Q: Can you describe how large those chasms are?
The wealth gap is the largest. The gap between white and black Americans in terms of accumulated wealth is a gap of about 95 points. So what that means is for every $100 that an average white family has in wealth, an average black family has $5.

When our participants estimate wealth gaps between black and white Americans they guess numbers that are closer to $100 to $80, so a 20 point gap in black-white wealth. People think there's a little bit of a gap but it's closing. In reality, the gap is not 20 points, it's 95 points, and that's the magnitude of difference that we see in our studies.

Income shows a similar but smaller pattern. Our participants will overestimate black-white income disparities are between 15-20 points, when the actually gap is more than 40 points.

We are overly optimistic about the ways in which economic outcomes are distributed in our society. We think it's much fairer by wide margins than it actually is.
Q: Your study also found that people think the issue is getting better over time.
In our studies, everybody surveyed has beliefs that things are improving. Respondents were much more averse to admitting racial economic inequality in the present than in the past. There was a tendency to see economic inequality between black and white Americans as naturally decreasing over time, a pattern that is inconsistent with reality.
Q: That sense of progress is a powerful narrative.
A big part of it is the widespread belief in the American dream in our society. You tell your children stories about working hard and striving to overcome economic and social obstacles in their way. As American as these narratives are, in this case, they can lead us astray; they can lead us to not see the world for what it is. There's a lot of work that still needs doing if our economic reality is going to match up with these narratives of opportunity.
Q: Are there meaningful variations you found based on the characteristics of your respondents?
Across all of our respondents, everybody is overly optimistic, but there is some individual variation. The people who are the most optimistic about equality between black and white Americans are the wealthiest white Americans in our sample. Psychologists see this as motivated reasoning. If you are high status in society based on your race and based on your income, you are even more likely to adhere to beliefs that society is fair. Because of your elevated position in society you really want to believe that your position is fairly determined. Rather than acknowledge your high status in an unfair system, it is far easier to shift your beliefs about the system itself by endorsing beliefs that society determines economic outcomes fairly.

We also find some evidence for networks predicting the extent that you will believe that society shares economic outcomes fairly between black and white individuals. Our social spaces tend to not be demographically diverse and not economically diverse. We tend to live and work with people who look like us, who live in houses that are similar to us, who go to schools with similar individuals who look like us.

What that does is it can create this divide of understanding between people. What we find in the data is that if your network is more diverse, and this is particularly for the black Americans in our sample, then this diversity of network predicts greater accuracy in your beliefs about black-white equality. So if you have contact with people who are from a different race, you have the opportunity to gather information about how your economic circumstances might differ from your own.
Q: We recently covered a study that found that more integrated communities get more value from venture capital. Is that similar?
I think that in general the world is changing. It's becoming more global and more diverse, and when you come in contact with people from different backgrounds, you have to shine a light on the ways in which you see reality differently. You don't have objective data, necessarily, all of the time. In fact, in some ways your perceptions of the world are going to be totally distorted by your beliefs and your group memberships. But other people have different vantage points, and those vantage points can be informative.

And so your ability to interface with people from different backgrounds can actually give you the best look at what reality really looks like. You can imagine that the people in our samples who are most overestimating would benefit from greater contact with diverse sets of people. Contact with more diverse communities and their unique experiences with economic opportunities or discrimination can be informative if one is to develop more accurate perceptions of the real economic conditions of society.
Q: What are some of the major policy discussions that you think this work should inform?
There's a general policy pivot that I think this suggests. Though economic inequality is a topic of public debate, we think that debate is focused too much on the outsized influence that the top of the distribution has on everybody else. If you create a more equal society by intervening at the top of the distribution, you will still have the problem of racial economic inequality that we observe in this work.

If you take a historical look at inequality, a lot of inequality in our society is built on systems of discrimination, and on slavery if you go back far enough. So this means that I see black-white racial inequality in society as causal to general inequality.

The good news is that there are some economic solutions, policy solutions, that could remedy these differences. One of the big ones is to really aggressively fight racial discrimination in home lending and real estate practices. One of the best ways to develop wealth is to own a home. If you solve these kinds of discriminatory structural practices in society, you will reduce the black-white economic inequality gap. And that will reduce inequality in society more broadly.

If you're in a market of ideas about what to change in society, we would start there. We hope that this paper gets the public to think more about the racial component of economic inequality.
Q: How important is it to see that problem accurately?
One of the dangers that we see happening is that we want to move past issues of race all the time because they are difficult to talk about, because they bring up really painful pasts that we have lived in this country. It's much more comfortable for us to avoid those thoughts. "Let's think about it as something that happened in the past and move on to a brighter future." Our paper suggests that what happens when you avoid thoughts of racial inequality is that you believe that economic differences between racial groups in society are naturally solving themselves.

When we perceive that kind of reality we can go on with our lives. It feels kind of comfortable. But in avoiding racial inequality, we will miss an opportunity to contend with one of the major challenges in our society. We want our society to be genuinely meritocratic. We want our society to live up to the American dream and we can't do that if this inequality exists. And we definitely can't solve the problem if we don't know it exists.
Q: That whole question of how much the history of discrimination is still alive has become salient in recent months with the events in Charlottesville and elsewhere.
We've really been reminded of how much work there still is left to do. But I want to caution that it's really painful for a lot of people to live in this moment, and so there is going to be a natural psychological motivation to want to see this go away, to see it solving itself in the ways in which we like to think of economic inequality based on race solving itself. And that's the danger. What we really want to do is we want to intervene on the bias that we see and we want to take a more active policy role, a more active interpersonal role in bravely confronting race in our society and having discussions about it, in talking with our children about it, in conducting business in that way as well.
Q: What else stands out to you in this work?
The gap in wealth is huge. It deserves its own attention because it's most problematic for a belief in meritocracy, because you accumulate wealth not because of anything you did. Maybe your parents or grandparents did. Wealth is based on unequal sharing of resources in the past. It really shouldn't be surprising that wealth differences are so high between black and white Americans, and the fact that it is really speaks to the blindness that we have about issues of race in American society.
Q: Does your study give any hints about how to move forward?
One of the things that we find is that our optimistic perceptions of racial equality in society are quite malleable, at least in some of our studies. When we ask people, you made those estimates of income inequality between black and white Americans-what if we said that we want you to think about an alternative United States, one where discrimination still exists in various domains? What do you think the gap is now? That increased the accuracy for our participants.

That suggests there is a path forward. A more honest assessment of what our society looks like, as painful as those conversations might be, will lead us to see the world for what it is and may actually actively lead us to have the kinds of policy discussions that will ultimately solve these problems.

That's where our work is going next. There is research that suggests that most people like to be accurate. So confronting bias by showing real economic outcomes might lead people to adjust their policy decisions. That's the hope for the future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Americans tend to be overly optimistic about economic equality between white and black citizens, according to a new study by Yale researchers.

# data[].attributes.body
This article explains how George Floyd died in police custody.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Times has reconstructed the death of George Floyd on May 25. Security footage, witness videos and official documents show how a series of actions by officers turned fatal.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article outlining George Floyd's death.

# data[].attributes.headline
Florida Teen Trayvon Martin is Shot and Killed

# data[].attributes.subject
Florida Teen Trayvon Martin is Shot and Killed

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about the murder of Trayvon Martin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an African American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman later claimed to have shot the unarmed 17-year-old out of self-defense during a physical altercation.

After police initially opted not to arrest Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Hispanic, the case sparked protests and ignited national debates about racial profiling and self-defense laws. Zimmerman later was charged with second-degree murder. Following a high-profile trial that riveted America, he was acquitted of the charges against him. The term "Black lives matter" was then used for the first time by organizer Alicia Garza in a July 13, 2013 Facebook post in response to Zimmerman's acquittal. The phrase spread widely and became a rallying cry against racial injustice.

On February 26, Martin, a Miami high school student, was in Sanford visiting his father. Dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, the teen was on his way back to the home of his father's fiancée, after buying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of juice, when he was spotted by Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator who was captain of the neighborhood patrol at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, which recently had experienced a series of break-ins and burglaries. Zimmerman called the non-emergency line of the Sanford police to report that Martin looked suspicious then ignored a police dispatcher's advice not to follow the young man. Moments later, gunfire rang out. When officers arrived, Martin was dead at the scene. Zimmerman, who had a bloody nose and cuts on the back of his head, was questioned then released. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, and police chose not to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed to have acted in self-defense.

After Martin's parents raised concerns about the police investigation into the death of their son, who had no criminal record, the case gained national attention. Protest rallies were held in cities nationwide, including New York City, where on March 21 hundreds of people gathered for the Million Hoodie March and demanded justice for Martin, who many believed Zimmerman had profiled as suspicious and threatening simply because the teen was Black. Two days later, President Barack Obama said of the shooting: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." In addition to raising a national debate about race relations, the shooting drew attention to Florida's controversial Stand Your Ground law, which allows people to use lethal force if they fear for their safety and does not require them to retreat from a dangerous situation, even when it's possible to do so.

On April 11, 2012, following weeks of demonstrations, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida's governor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial in June 2013. In court, the prosecution portrayed Zimmerman as a wannabe cop who had profiled Martin as a criminal, chased him down and fought him. Prosecutors also tried to poke holes in Zimmerman's self-defense claim by pointing to inconsistencies in his statements to the police. Defense attorneys for Zimmerman, who did not take the stand, contended he only shot Martin after the teen attacked him. On July 13, after deliberating for 16 hours over two days, a jury of six women found Zimmerman not guilty.

In November 2013, the city of Sanford announced new rules forbidding volunteers in its neighborhood watch program from carrying guns and pursuing suspects. Martin's death set off nationwide protests like the Million Hoodie March. And in 2013, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi formed the Black Lives Matter Network with the mission to "eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes."

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Florida Teen Trayvon Martin Shot and Killed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Trayvon Martin, an African American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida.

# data[].attributes.headline
What to Know About Breonna Taylor's Death

# data[].attributes.subject
What to Know About Breonna Taylor's Death

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about the death of Breonna Taylor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What to Know About Breonna Taylor’s Death

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fury over her killing by the police in Louisville, Ky., fueled protests, and questions persist about how the botched raid unfolded.

# data[].attributes.headline
Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution

# data[].attributes.subject
Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about how dealing with the coronavirus may prompt violation of our rights in the Constitution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To assess how Americans weigh the trade-off between preserving civil liberties and halting the spread of the coronavirus, we conducted a survey last week, just as state and local governments were beginning to implement their most restrictive policies yet. The survey reveals a remarkable willingness to tolerate civil-rights violations in order to confront the pandemic, regardless of party affiliation.

We presented a nationally representative sample of 3,000 U.S. residents with eight possible policy responses to the outbreak, all of which may be unconstitutional, including forced quarantine in a government facility, criminal penalties for spreading misinformation, bans against certain people entering the country, and conscription of health-care workers. We also asked our sample to imagine that public-health officials had reviewed the policies and estimated that each would likely save some number of lives, hypothetical figures that we provided.

A majority of respondents supported all eight of these policies, most by considerable margins. The proposals with the lowest support were seizing businesses and banning all citizens and noncitizens outside the country from entering, but these policies still had 58 and 63 percent support, respectively. The proposals with the highest levels of support were banning noncitizens from entering the country (85 percent) and conscripting health-care professionals to work despite risks to their own health (78 percent). Both policies burden a defined minority of the population, so it's not surprising that large majorities support them. But criminalizing speech based on its content, an idea antithetical to modern American constitutionalism, was also very popular: About 70 percent of respondents supported restricting people's ability to say things that may qualify as misinformation. Likewise, 77 percent of respondents support suspending all religious services and gatherings, thereby restricting religious freedom. And even when we explicitly told half of our sample that the policies may violate the Constitution, the majority supported all eight of them-even the speech restrictions.
Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself
Perhaps the most striking feature of our results is the broad bipartisan endorsement of these liberty-restricting policies. Like other surveys, ours reflected a huge gap between Democrats and Republicans in approval of President Donald Trump's handling of the pandemic: 34 percent of Democrats expressed approval, while 88 percent of Republicans did. One might have reasonably concluded that different policy preferences were driving these responses: that Democrats want aggressive government intervention, which they feel the president has failed to deliver, while Republicans-encouraged by Trump's early dismissal of the outbreak-prefer a wait-and-see or laissez-faire approach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
broad bipartisan endorsement of these liberty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Adam Chilton, Kevin Cope, Charles Crabtree, Mila Versteeg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To assess how Americans weigh the trade-off between preserving civil liberties and halting the spread of the coronavirus, we conducted a survey last week, just as state and local governments were beginning to implement their most restrictive policies yet. The survey reveals a remarkable willingness to tolerate civil-rights violations in order to confront the pandemic, regardless of party affiliation.

# data[].attributes.body
This website showcases how America's internment of Japanese men and women violates rights within our founding documents.

# data[].attributes.headline
Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship

# data[].attributes.subject
Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article where the White Houses passes an order not allowing online censorship to happen.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Ideas at the Heart of U.S. Government

# data[].attributes.subject
The Ideas at the Heart of U.S. Government

# data[].attributes.body
Here are some ideas about what is important to the American government.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The US government is based on ideas of limited government, including natural rights, popular sovereignty, republicanism, and social contract.

Limited government is the belief that the government should have certain restrictions in order to protect the individual rights and civil liberties of citizens.

Introduction

In 1776, the

issued the Declaration of Independence, stating their specific grievances with the British monarchy and why they were going to create a separate government. After the colonies separated from the British monarchy and formed the United States of America, they had to answer some crucial questions: 1) If not a monarchy, what type of government was the United States going to have? 2) What kind of government was going to protect the people without violating their individual liberties?

decided to create a limited government based on ideas of natural rights, popular sovereignty, republicanism, and the social contract. We can see some of these ideas pop up in the foundational documents of the United States, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But what are these democratic ideas and why has the United States continued to hold onto them for more than 250 years?

This article describes each of these democratic ideas and explains why the Framers used them as a basis for government.

What is a limited government?

After the colonies decided to separate from the British monarchy, the Framers had to develop a system of government that would gain the support of all of the Patriots. They agreed on a system of limited government.

Limited government is a political system in which there are certain restrictions placed on the government to protect individual rights and liberties. This decision to create a limited government was a deliberate departure from the British monarchy, which the Framers felt violated their rights. They intentionally created a limited government that would have to abide by a set of rules designed by the people of the country.

Now that the Framers had a plan for the type of government they were going to have, they had to decide a few things:

What are the roles and responsibilities of this government?

How will the government respond to the will of the people?

To answer these questions, the Framers turned to political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whose ideas about what makes a government successful inspired the current system of government in the United States today.

What are natural rights?

The main argument in the Declaration of Independence was that the British monarchy violated the natural rights of the American people. Natural rights, sometimes called unalienable rights, are rights the Framers believed all people are born with and can never give up. The Founders argued that the government's central purpose should be to protect and uphold these rights.

John Locke, an

philosopher, described natural rights as the rights to one's own "life, liberty, and property." His work inspired Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence, who described unalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Having defined these natural rights, the Founders of the United States then had to answer the question: "How do we make sure society safeguards natural rights without giving the government too much power?"

What is a social contract?

For the government to protect the natural rights of American citizens, people would have to see the government as an authority they must respect. They would enter into a social contract with each other, meaning that American society as a whole would agree to give up some freedoms to be protected by the federal government. Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher, theorized that the social contract was the foundation of government.

If the people did not give up some freedoms, then the government would have no way to rule over them. For instance, you can't just walk into someone's house if the door is open and claim that the house is now yours. That is a freedom that you give up so the government can protect you from someone else doing the same thing to you. However, by ensuring that the government was limited, the Founders created a system that protected the freedoms granted to the people.

Still,

were concerned about a strong central government turning into a tyrannical monarchy again. They faced yet another question: how do the people ensure that the government does not get too powerful and start restricting all of their freedoms?

What is popular sovereignty?

The Founders believed that the United States should be founded on the principle of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the idea that the government's power comes from the will of the people or the "consent of the governed." If the government started to violate the will of the people, Americans would have the right to change that.

This idea is the main argument within the Declaration of Independence, which claimed that the British monarchy had become too powerful and was not listening to the needs and desires of the colonists, who therefore had the right to rebel.

In the United States, we see popular sovereignty at a smaller level in most elections when the power of the government shifts from one political party to another. When control of the government shifts from one party to another, it shows that the will of the people has also changed.

Changes in leadership gives us insight into what the people want from their government. Political parties play a vital role in American politics, as they represent the opinions and needs of the people to the government.

What is republicanism?

Leading up to the Revolutionary War, a famous phrase was "No taxation without representation!" To feel like their wants and needs were being heard by the government, the colonists wanted direct representation, but the British were unwilling to grant that to the colonies. Keeping that in mind, the Founders wanted to make sure that they were creating a political system that represented the people. But how do the people get the government to listen to their will?

The Framers believed that the best form of government is one in which elected leaders represent the interests of the people. This is known as republicanism.

The Framers wanted the will of the people to be reflected in the daily decisions of government and to prevent a tyrannical government from rising. By creating a system of government in which the people elected their leaders, the Framers believed that there was less of a chance of a government that would hold onto power and refuse to give it up.

Despite the Framers' desire to create a representative government, they extended the privilege of voting only to a small portion of US citizens: white, landowning men. It took nearly 200 years to extend voting rights to all people in the United States, meaning that not every person's needs and wants were heard or represented in government for a lot of American history.

What do you think?

How do some of these democratic ideas continue to show up in American politics today?

How do these democratic ideas influence the decisions and actions of American politicians?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The ideas at the heart of US government (article) | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Statues Are Falling Around the World

# data[].attributes.subject
How Statues Are Falling Around the World

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about the removal of national monuments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Statues Are Falling Around the World (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Statues and monuments that have long honored racist figures are being boxed up, spray-painted — or beheaded.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Statues Are Falling Around the World

# data[].attributes.subject
How Statues Are Falling Around the World

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about the removal of national monuments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Statues Are Falling Around the World (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Statues and monuments that have long honored racist figures are being boxed up, spray-painted — or beheaded.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is a notable court case guaranteeing the right to education regardless of race.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about the Women's Right to Vote.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.

Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but their strategies varied. Some tried to pass suffrage acts in each state-nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. More public tactics included parades, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Supporters were heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused.

By 1916, most of the major suffrage organizations united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917, and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and two weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment was adopted. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
See the 19th Amendment on display in the new exhibit Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote at the National Archives Museum Enlarge House Joint Resolution 1 proposing the 19th amendment to the states View in National Archives Catalog The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote.

# data[].attributes.body
An article that describes the story of Emmett Till's Death.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When 14-year-old Emmett Till left Chicago for Mississippi on a southbound train in the summer of 1955, he almost forgot to kiss his mother goodbye. The bright-eyed youth was excited for a big trip to visit his great-uncle, Mose Wright, a sharecropper and preacher who lived in a small home near Money, a Mississippi Delta whistle stop.

Till was a confident, fun-loving kid, quick to play pranks and joke around. He loved baseball and had a soft spot for animals. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, knew he was unaware of the Jim Crow mores of the South and how dangerous it could be there for African American children like him. Before he left, she tried to impress upon him that Mississippi was different. "Even though you think you're perfectly within your right, for goodness sake take low," she said, according to subsequently published accounts. "If necessary, get on your knees and beg apologies."

It took all day to travel 650 miles to Mississippi, and Till was flowing over with excitement, barely able to sit still. In the great alluvial plain of the Delta, agricultural fields stretched as far as Till could see, punctuated by small copses and the occasional rural settlement. In the depths of August, stifling heat hung heavily over the land, some of the most fertile in the world.

With his cousins, Till fished and swam and horsed around. Then one evening, they went to a local store, Bryant's Grocery, and just before leaving, Till allegedly whistled at the 21-year-old white proprietor, Carolyn Bryant, breaking one of the South's most notorious taboos.

A few days later, Till was sleeping when the men came for him. In the predawn darkness, the family could see the gun in the beam of the white men's flashlight. Wright and his wife, Elizabeth, begged them not to take their nephew. But the men ordered the boy to get dressed, led him out of the house and into a vehicle, possibly a truck, and drove west on gravel roads with the headlights off. Several days later, a fisherman found Till's body, grossly disfigured from torture, in the Tallahatchie River. Someone had tied a 70-pound cotton gin fan to his neck, hoping he would never be seen again.

But unlike so many African Americans in Mississippi who were murdered, Emmett Till was not forgotten. Till Bradley had his body shipped north for the funeral and then demanded that the casket remain open during the viewing and service so the world could see what white racists had done to her son. Jet magazine subsequently published photographs of Till's mangled corpse accompanied by his devastated mother, laying bare the racial realities of the Jim Crow South. Till's murder sparked international outrage and, according to many scholars, helped catalyze the modern civil rights movement. When she refused to give up her seat on the bus, Rosa Parks said she had Till on her mind.

Today, two markers along an isolated dirt road memorialize the site where Till's body was dragged from the water, but they keep getting shot up and replaced. On an August morning, I pulled over with my tour guide for the day, Jessie Jaynes-Diming, owner of Mississippi Delta Experience Touring. We walked through a clearing to the weed-choked banks of the river. Cicadas buzzed in the heavy morning heat, and dragonflies looped around. It wasn't hard to imagine how people could disappear here in the murky water. Back at the road, I read the memorial signs, perforated with bullet holes. Someone had stuffed a rose into one of the pockmarks. Jaynes-Diming and I stood there in silence.

"It's disappointing in a way but enlightening also," she said finally. "I don't want to get too comfortable and not know that's the way people think. If that's the way they feel about it, leave it like that."

Jaynes-Diming and I had met in Sumner that morning, in front of the courthouse where an all-white, all-male jury let Till's killers go free. (They later confessed in a magazine interview.) Over the course of several hours, we visited some of the key landmarks connected to this notorious crime, which still occasionally resurfaces in the news. (In 2018, the Department of Justice informed Congress it had reopened the case because of newly discovered information, which has not yet been disclosed.)

The National Park Service is mandated to preserve the natural and cultural heritage of America, but currently, there are no sites in the system that protect places connected to Emmett Till - or any of Mississippi's complicated civil rights history. That might change soon. In 2017, Congress passed legislation requiring the Park Service to undertake a study of civil rights landmarks in Mississippi. The three-year process could eventually lead to the creation of a new national park site - or several - in the state.

But with such a rich history of both courageous activism and devastating violence, which stories will be commemorated? And who gets to tell them? I traveled to Mississippi to see some of the places under consideration and to learn about local concerns and hopes for how this history will be memorialized. Over the course of several hot August days, starting in Jackson, I drove a loop north and clockwise through the Mississippi Delta, where some of the most significant events in the civil rights movement took place.

Among other sites, I visited Bryant's Grocery, the Sumner courthouse and the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist assassinated in his driveway in 1963. The legislation calling for what is known as a "special resource study" specifically identifies these places as well as the Neshoba County jail where voting-rights activists James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were held before they were ambushed and murdered in 1964, and the office of Gilbert Mason Sr. in Biloxi. Mason helped organize wade-ins to desegregate beaches in the city. Many locals have their own views on which figures, stories and places they believe the Park Service should recognize. In 2018, 350 people showed up at six statewide public meetings to make their recommendations.

Some of these sites might become federally protected in other ways. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in May that would designate the Medgar Evers House, currently a museum, as a national monument; the Senate could vote on it soon. In 2017, in the same memorandum in which Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke recommended shrinking national monuments such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, he also proposed three new ones, including the Medgar Evers House. President Donald Trump could designate it under the Antiquities Act.

"The stories of Medgar Evers and Emmett Till are very important chapters in both Mississippi and U.S. history," said Alan Spears, cultural resources director at NPCA. "Our hope is that we can commemorate their legacies without tying such an administrative action to a rollback of existing national monuments."

Though some Mississippians would prefer to sweep the state's disturbing civil rights history from view, that resistance has lessened over time, and there is widespread support for new park sites in the state, whether they are established through the Park Service study or other avenues. "I think there's a hunger for people, black and white, to know the story - in Mississippi and everywhere," said Jerry Mitchell, the journalist whose investigative reporting at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson helped bring some of Mississippi's most notorious Klansmen to justice, including Medgar Evers' killer.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is a tangible reflection of the cultural shift toward openness over the last two decades, and though it's not part of the Park Service study, several people recommended I start my journey there. Opened in late 2017 in a slick, contemporary building in downtown Jackson, the museum unflinchingly tells the story of racial subjugation from the time of slavery to the present day. Artifacts include shackles, antique posters breezily advertising slave sales, the gun that killed Medgar Evers and the magazine that published photos of Emmett Till's corpse.

During the slavery era, Mississippi was known as a particularly violent state, perhaps because of the sheer effort required to tame this fertile, forested, swampy land and the incredible wealth at stake. After the Civil War, slavery ended in name, but the system of violent subordination remained. One of the most gut-wrenching displays in the museum is a glowing list of names of the people lynched in the state. According to a placard, between 1877 and 1950, Mississippi mobs murdered 600 people, many of whom were tormented in carnival-like affairs that white families, including young children, attended. No other state can claim as brutal a history of lynching.

The extrajudicial violence that enforced racial oppression continued in different forms as the civil rights movement gained steam. Just north of downtown Jackson, Medgar Evers' trim turquoise home sits on a serene, leafy street. Evers was serving as the first field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP when a white supremacist shot him in his driveway with a high-powered rifle one evening in 1963. His wife and children heard the gunfire from inside the house. No ambulance ever came for him, and when he was taken to the nearest hospital, the staff almost didn't treat him because of the color of his skin. Evers died within 40 minutes of arriving.

Now a museum operated by Tougaloo College, the house is open by appointment. Minnie White Watson, the sole staff member, was a freshman in college when she first met Medgar Evers, whom she described as gentle and hardworking. Hearing him speak opened her eyes to the civil rights struggle, and she worked with him briefly. Now she gives tours of the home and tells his story - but she doesn't much like talking about her own involvement. "I get emotional," she said.

Evers, a World War II veteran, saw and experienced injustice and violence throughout his life. As a kid, he knew that a black boy who had dared to venture to the whites-only fair in his town had been lynched. While working as an insurance salesman as a young man, he had witnessed the deep poverty of people who still lived in dirt-floor houses in plantation-style servitude, and that helped shape him into an activist. He went on to organize voter registration drives and boycotts in the 1950s and '60s and investigated Emmett Till's murder for the NAACP. The Evers' house received numerous threats, from menacing phone calls to a Molotov cocktail.

"We would ask questions of Medgar - 'Why are you doing it?'" Watson said. "He said it was on his shoulders. Somebody has to do it." Evers knew that he lived with a target on his back, she said, but he was committed to the cause. His conviction inspired others.

"You looked at it, and you said, 'He's right. When somebody tells you where you can live, where you can sleep, where you can eat, where you can worship, even where you can relieve yourself, you are not yourself,'" she said. "You don't own anything when somebody can tell you all of that. So it hits you: What do I have to lose? Nothing but my life - and it ain't mine anyway."

Later that morning, I traveled about two hours north to Cleveland, Mississippi, to meet Rolando Herts, the director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning. The center oversees the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, a region including civil rights and blues music landmarks that the Park Service has recognized for its unique cultural value. The Delta Center and the heritage area hosted the first public meeting for the Park Service. Echoing comments gathered from Delta residents, Herts said he is concerned that the Park Service will choose to memorialize only one or two sites related to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till.

"There's so much more to the civil rights story," Herts said. "Community members recognize that and are very vocal about that. There are all these other stories of important figures who contributed greatly to the civil rights movement in the Delta. It would be a shame not to tag those on to this broader story of civil rights in the state."

Herts invited several other locals to our meeting, and to our surprise, about 15 people showed up. He ordered fried chicken, chips and soda for all, and we gathered in a circle so everyone could share their opinions and stories. Many in the group want the Park Service to highlight the collective nature of the movement and not focus only on famous leaders - typically men - or murders and other atrocities. They also hope to showcase stories of hope and resilience. Herts is advocating for the Park Service to create a civil rights trail that could boost tourism in the depressed region. In 2011, the Mississippi department of tourism created the Mississippi Freedom Trail to commemorate people and places that played a significant role in the civil rights movement, but Herts and others picture an expansion of the concept that, with Park Service support, could include trained guides and visitor centers.

One of the men, Charles McLaurin, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, spoke about the renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer. The youngest of 20 children in a sharecropping family, Hamer worked in the cotton fields from the age of 6. She was fired from the plantation she grew up on for trying to register to vote. The injustice she suffered inspired her to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, run for Congress and deliver a landmark nationally televised speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1964.

"I think they should look at the spirit of this woman, the respect, the courage, the determination," said McLaurin, who worked alongside Hamer registering voters and later acted as her campaign manager. He helped establish a garden and statue in Hamer's honor in Ruleville and would like to see it recognized.

Willena White shared the story of her father, Ed Scott, the first nonwhite catfish farmer in the country, who battled prejudicial lending practices and discrimination by managers of local plants, who refused to process his fish. The family is developing the Delta Farmers Museum and Cultural Learning Center, which they would like to become a park site.

Myrna Smith-Thompson, executive director of the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a civic organization, came to the meeting to call attention to Mound Bayou, a town founded by former slaves that thrived in the early 20th century and acted as a refuge for African Americans throughout the region.

"A lot of the good things that were done don't get the attention like an injustice or a murder," said Smith-Thompson. "There were some other things that were accomplished by African Americans, and the stories of the strategies, the visions, the creativity, the things that they did to assure the growth and sustainability - the mere survival - of African American people ... those are the things I'd like to promote."

Other concerns loom large among the Mississippi residents I spoke with about the possible creation of a new park site. From all communities, there is a deep distrust of the federal government. In addition, many people expressed how important it is that these stories be told from the perspective of those who lived them.

"What you hear today on the civil rights story is what other folks told," said Darryl Johnson, a preacher and the mayor of Mound Bayou. "We don't tell it 'cause we're still goin' through it - we are still having a civil rights problem. When other folks tell our story, I get frustrated. All of us do. They'll take it, just like the white man did, and say, 'I got it, I'm gonna show you how to do it,' and we're still left out. The bottom line is we need to tell our own stories."

Ben West, the chief of planning who is overseeing the study, is keenly aware of the stakes of the project, one of the biggest studies the Park Service's Southeast Regional Office has ever led.

"The perspective I got firsthand in Mississippi was a) how personal this is to so many people, and b) a deep concern," he said. "People are saying, 'Hey, Park Service, you better get this right. You better address the concerns and resources of the movement.'" West is enlisting the help of local civil rights scholars and historians to consult on the project. Alan Spears of NPCA is also organizing meetings to help locals come to a consensus about which sites to recognize.

Sumner is one of the communities participating in the process. A rural Delta town, it looks as if it could be the set for a 1950s film. The stately brick Tallahatchie County Courthouse sits in the center of the town square, which is framed by small-town businesses - a lawyer's office, beauty salon, drugstore, restaurant. Outside the courthouse, a Confederate monument still stands, and the interior of the courtroom looks precisely as it did in 1955 when a jury acquitted Emmett Till's killers. For more than 50 years, many people tried to forget the murder, but it only grew in significance.

In 2006, Jerome Little, the first African American president of the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors, organized a multiracial commission to help the town come to terms with the killing and begin to heal. In 2007, the commission offered a formal public apology to the Till family. Over the following years, the group also restored the courthouse and established a museum, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, across the street. I had booked a tour of the museum and the courthouse with Patrick Weems, co-founder and director of the center. As we walked through the courtroom with its simple white walls and wooden chairs, Weems said that Little, who died in 2011, dreamed that one day the Park Service would assume management of these landmarks.

"It would be surreal for this community for the Park Service to preserve this story," Weems said. "In 1955, the federal government turned its back on Till and the Till family - they did not pursue any kind of FBI investigation. For the federal government to take over, I think it continues this process of restorative justice. There's a symbolic nature to it."

The reconciliation commission helped the community face the murder and its aftermath, but racism still threads through life here, usually emerging in more subtle forms, such as the continued silence of many white people. One example is Bryant's Grocery. During my tour, Jaynes-Diming and I pulled over to the side of the road in Money, little more than a set of train tracks, a cotton gin and a few homes. I didn't notice Bryant's Grocery at first. The old wooden porch has fallen into a heap, and vines have overcome the crumbling brick walls. The family that owns it - the children of an unrepentant juror, Ray Tribble - have not maintained it and instead let it decay. Over the years, more than a half-dozen people have attempted to purchase the store to restore it, but the family has refused the offers. They are currently asking $4 million for the property. (The family did not respond to a request for comment.) Despite the deterioration of the store, visitors still come by regularly to see it.

The family did secure a state historic-preservation grant earmarked for civil rights-related projects to restore the service station next door and create a small visitor stop. The day we drove there, it was quiet, sparkling white in the hot sun. "I've never seen it open," said Jaynes-Diming as we peered inside the plate-glass windows. Inside, quaint 1950s memorabilia crowded the floors and shelves, but there's no mention of Till anywhere - or of the racial injustice that defined that era. "I've tried to get it open," said Jaynes-Diming, "but always no response."

Part of the difficulty and urgency of remembering civil rights history now is that many people, like Darryl Johnson of Mound Bayou, feel that the concerns of that movement are still painfully relevant. An African American college student I met in Clarksdale, Mississippi, told me about the fear she experienced when she began to hear racist talk on campus following President Trump's election. Another African American woman in her 20s, who attended the meeting in Cleveland but didn't want her name used, said that she didn't think the state, or the country, has come all that far in terms of race relations.

"The fight has been a courageous fight, but unfortunately ... there's still no protection for people reaching for freedom," she said. "How is it that we are told we are in a free space, we've progressed, when we're really in very similar bondage to our ancestors?"

For our last stop on the tour, Jaynes-Diming and I visited the barn where Till was killed for acting free. Just off a remote road full of heaves and cracks and down a long driveway, the barn sits next to a farmhouse on top of a hill overlooking a primeval cypress swamp and soybean fields. The dentist who owns the property allows people to visit it and even enlarged the driveway so buses can turn around. The barn is tidy and well-kept, and the peaceful beauty of the rural backdrop is unsettling in light of the horror that unfolded here more than a half-century ago, when grown men tortured an eighth-grader thinking - knowing - that the world they lived in would let them get away with it. It is a poignant place to contemplate the complex legacy of Emmett Till, but there isn't any sign, marker or formal indication of the site's significance in American history. Right now, it's just a barn on a lonely road in rural America.

About the author

Kate Siber

Kate Siber, a freelance writer and correspondent for Outside magazine, is based in Durango, Colorado. Her writing also has appeared in National Geographic Traveler and The New York Times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When 14-year-old Emmett Till left Chicago for Mississippi on a southbound train in the summer of 1955, he almost forgot to kiss his mother goodbye. The bright-eyed youth was excited for a big trip to visit his great-uncle, Mose Wright, a sharecropper and preacher who lived in a small home near Money, a Mississippi Delta whistle stop.

# data[].attributes.body
The article is about Rosa Parks' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On December 1,1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of going to the back of the bus, which was designated for African Americans, she sat in the front. When the bus started to fill up with white passengers, the bus driver asked Parks to move. She refused. Her resistance set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. As a child, she went to an industrial school for girls and later enrolled at Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes (present-day Alabama State University). Unfortunately, Parks was forced to withdraw after her grandmother became ill. Growing up in the segregated South, Parks was frequently confronted with racial discrimination and violence. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement at a young age.

Parks married a local barber by the name of Raymond Parks when she was 19. He was actively fighting to end racial injustice. Together the couple worked with many social justice organizations. Eventually, Rosa was elected secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

By the time Parks boarded the bus in 1955, she was an established organizer and leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Parks not only showed active resistance by refusing to move she also helped organize and plan the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Many have tried to diminish Parks' role in the boycott by depicting her as a seamstress who simply did not want to move because she was tired. Parks denied the claim and years later revealed her true motivation:

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Parks courageous act and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the integration of public transportation in Montgomery. Her actions were not without consequence. She was jailed for refusing to give up her seat and lost her job for participating in the boycott.

After the boycott, Parks and her husband moved to Hampton, Virginia and later permanently settled in Detroit, Michigan. Parks work proved to be invaluable in Detroit's Civil Rights Movement. She was an active member of several organizations which worked to end inequality in the city. By 1980, after consistently giving to the movement both financially and physically Parks, now widowed, suffered from financial and health troubles. After almost being evicted from her home, local community members and churches came together to support Parks. On October 24th, 2005, at the age of 92, she died of natural causes leaving behind a rich legacy of resistance against racial discrimination and injustice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Find out more about her at womenshistory.org.

# data[].attributes.body
The article explains the story of Harriet Tubman where liberty was denied.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman Statue (Sep 3, 2010)
by Jim Henderson
National Women's History Museum

Character, Courage and Commitment

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman made several trips into slave-holding states, leading dozens of individuals to freedom in the North. During the Civil War, she further risked her life and safety to work first as a nurse and then as a spy for the Union Army. Afterwards, she became an outspoken advocate for African American and women's rights, insisting that all be afforded dignity, treated with respect and granted equality.

Harriet Tubman Statue (Sep 3, 2010)
by Jim Henderson
National Women's History Museum

Araminta Ross was born in Dorchester County, Maryland in or around 1822 on Anthony Thompson's plantation. Araminta grew up to be known as Harriet Tubman. By 1840, Harriet, her mother and several siblings had been relocated from a plantation in Bucktown back to Thompson's farm.

The young girl would grow up to become one of the most celebrated figures of her time. Her legacy of steadfast courage and commitment to justice would endure more than 100 years after her death.

Today, no trace of Tubman's birthplace remains. Though, a historical marker notes the location.

Cambridge, Maryland. Dorchester County. Site of Harriet Tubman's birth

Sweet potato planting, Hopkinson's Plantation
by Henry P. Moore
National Women's History Museum

Tubman worked as a field hand for many years -following the oxen loading and unloading wood and carrying heavy burdens -all along developing great strength and determination.Later, she was hired out to perform housework and child care where the plantation mistress proved capricious and cruel, employing frequent beatings for the most minor of offenses.

The Bucktown Village store still stands in Bucktown, Maryland. It was here that 12-year-old slave Araminta Ross was shopping with the plantation cook when an overseer entered, pursuing an escaped slave. The overseer ordered Araminta to assist with tying the man up, which she refused to do. As the escaping slave bolted for the door, the overseer swept up a two-pound scale weight up from the counter and threw it after him. The weight missed its mark, hitting Araminta instead. The blow knocked her unconscious.

It was not her first experience with the violence of slavery, but it would have the most lasting effect as she suffered from severe headaches for the rest of her life.

Bucktown Village Store historic site, Cambridge, Maryland.

Harriet Tubman Quotation
Harriet Tubman
National Women's History Museum

Tubman worked as a field hand for many years -following the oxen loading and unloading wood and carrying heavy burdens -all along developing great strength and determination.Later, she was hired out to perform housework and child care where the plantation mistress proved capricious and cruel, employing frequent beatings for the most minor of offenses.

A drawing of Harriet Tubman called "Moses" (1934-1935)
by Bernarda Bryson
National Women's History Museum

Araminta married a free black named John Tubman in 1844, taking his last name. She changed her first name, adopting her mother's name, becoming Harriet. In 1849, worried that she and the other slaves on the plantation where she lived were going to be sold, Tubman decided to run away. Her husband refused to go with her, so she set out with her two brothers. Her brothers turned back, but Tubman persevered to freedom, settling in Philadelphia.

Tubman could not be happy in freedom knowing that her relatives and friends remained enslaved. She made the dangerous decision to return to Maryland to secure their freedom as well.

Harriet Tubman Quotation (Apr 20, 2016)
Harriet Tubman
National Women's History Museum

Linchester Mill was the hub of Underground Railroad activity in the area. Whites and blacks, free and enslaved, had regular contact here at the general store or the post office. Free and enslaved African Americans worked side-by-side, providing a constant flow of information and support to freedom seekers. Quakers and free blacks who lived near the mill secretly helped fleeing slaves pass through the area.

The mill dam created a spot to cross Hunting Creek. Such crossing points helped freedom seekers avoid unwanted attention.

Linchester Mill historic site, Preston, Maryland.

Harriet Tubman's parents were active in the Underground Railroad, and she most likely made her first escape from their home near Choptank Landing.

On Christmas Day 1854, Tubman led her three brothers to freedom from nearby Poplar Neck. Robert, Ben and Henry, as well as several others, hid in a corn crib until dark, when they could begin their journey north.

At nightfall, Harriet safely led them on their journey towards freedom, traveling through Delaware, Pennsylvania, and across upstate New York to St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Choptank River, Preston, Maryland, near site of Tubman's parents' home.

The forests, marshes, and waterways that characterized Tubman's home territory are largely unchanged from the time that she made her home in Dorchester County.

Knowledge of the terrain was vital to survival while hiding and trying to flee. Tubman and others had to successfully navigate the land and waterways, trap and forage for food, and hide from their pursuers. Understanding the tides, knowing how to find food and fresh water, and following the North Star were all skills that later proved vital as she guided her charges north along the Underground Railroad to freedom.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge, Maryland

Harriet Tubman
National Women's History Museum

As part of the Underground Railroad network, Tubman successfully employed a variety of escape and evasion methods to help aid fleeing slaves. Disguise was a favorite. If it was announced that a group of male slaves had bolted from a plantation, she dressed the fugitives as women for the trip north.

On another occasion, Tubman came dangerously close to being identified during a stopover at a train depot. To confuse her pursuers, she quickly purchased a ticket for the southbound train, correctly believing, that as it turned out, few would expect an "outlaw" of her notoriety to venture further into Dixie in such a public manner. For one of her more brazen missions, she convinced a light-skinned fugitive to pose as a white master transporting a group of slaves to a town further up the road.

For all the recriminations directed at her by displeased plantation owners throughout the South, Tubman was never caught and never lost a "passenger."

The Underground Railroad
by Chas T. Webber
National Women's History Museum

Moving "passengers" along the Underground Railroad, Tubman became very familiar with the different towns and transportation routes characterizing the South. This information proved extremely valuable to Federal military commanders after the Civil War began in 1861.

Poorly drawn and outdated maps, coupled with soldiers who had little knowledge of the United States beyond their own village, made individuals like Tubman vitally important to the Union war effort. Utilizing the extensive knowledge of the South she had obtained while working for the Underground Railroad, Tubman was able to provide accurate intelligence data to Northern troops.

Tubman also served as a spy, seeking and delivering intelligence from behind enemy lines. At the war's conclusion, she was granted a military pension of $20 per month, the first African American woman to receive one.

Harriet Tubman
National Women's History Museum

After the war, Tubman retired to a piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York where she lived surrounded by family. She cared for her parents and other relatives, becoming a stalwart of the community. She was famous in her own lifetime for her accomplishments, was sought after as a speaker, and collaborated on a biography of her life story.

Tubman died in 1913 and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.

Tubman's legacy lives on in the hearts and spirit of every American. She has been honored with monuments and statues, schools bear her name, and thousands of Americans daily travel along Harriet Tubman roads, streets, and avenues.

Harriet Tubman Elementary School, Washington, DC.

Harriet Tubman (2012)
National Women's History Museum

Tubman has been honored on a United States postage stamp.

MLK Jr. Barack Obama and Malcolm X (2010)
National Women's History Museum

She has been celebrated as an enduring Civil Rights icon by contemporary artists and activists.

In April 2016, the US Treasury announced that she would become the first American woman pictured on currency in over 100 years.

Soon, Tubman will take her place in history on the new twenty dollar bill.

Quote Describing Harriet Tubman as Inspiration (Apr 21, 2016)
National Women's History Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman Statue (Sep 3, 2010)by Jim HendersonNational Women's History Museum As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman made several trips into slave-holding states, leading dozens of individuals to freedom in the North. During the Civil War, she further risked her life and safety to work first as a nurse and then as a spy for the Union Army.