Students read Avi's "Nothing But the Truth" and examine the First Amendment and student rights, and then decide whether the rights of the novel's protagonist, Philip, are violated.

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members and their supporters, images, news footage, an interactive timeline, and other sources about an important campaign to secure the treaty rights and sovereignty of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Scroll to begin an exploration of the actions Native Nations took to address injustices.

Without question, Americans look to their First Amendment right to free speech probably as much if not more than any other protection afforded to them under our Constitution and Bill of Rights; for that reason, it demands much attention.  This lesson will seek to provide a background of some of the major free speech cases throughout our country’s history, where those rights have been allowed to be infringed upon by government, and where the courts have stepped in to prevent government from censoring speech.

“Friends Across The Wires” is an original, full-length play, written and directed by Laura Ferri and produced by Tamara Bunnell, exploring the impact of the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII through the lens of young people in Seattle. Based on first person accounts, interviews, and additional primary source research, the play offers an intimate exploration of friendship while examining historical patterns of racism. The project was originally intended to be a live, touring production, but Covid-19 rendered this impossible. The play was then filmed at the Erickson Theatre by Seattle Colleges Cable Television (SCCtv) and edited with sound design, photos and period music.

Freedom for some meant slavery for others. The cruel irony of this nation’s founding and its “Temple of Liberty”—the U.S. Capitol—is that both were made possible by the enslavement of African Americans.

The labor of enslaved and free blacks helped build the Capitol. An enslaved African American man helped to cast the Statue of Freedom, which was placed atop the Dome during the Civil War.

Since the end of the Civil War, African Americans have struggled to move out of the shadows and into the Temple of Liberty as full participants.

This the online version of a traveling exhibit by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society that depicts the journey of African Americans from slavery to freedom and political representation in the U.S. Capitol. The exhibit opened February 2006 in Baltimore, Maryland at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.

An illustrated sheet music cover for a Unionist song, "God and Our Union," composed by Leopold Meignen with words by Louis Dela. The illustration features four maidens, each representing a section of the United States--North, South, East and West. The maidens stand around an altar and point to a scroll, the "Constitution of North America," which they unroll. Rising from the altar are two Corinthian columns supporting an arch, over which is draped a large American flag. Atop the arch sits an eagle. In the space between the columns appears a large, gleaming anchor, symbol of hope. The scene is surrounded by dark clouds through which an eye appears. The vigilant eye was a familiar Masonic symbol, and a device adopted by the Wide-Awake Clubs of 1860. (See "Free Speech, Free Soil, Free Men," no. 1860-14.) Here it probably refers to the song's assertion of divine watchfulness over the Union.|Entered . . . 1860 by Beck & Lawton. |Philada. Published by Beck & Lawton, S.E. Cor. 7th & Chestnut St. Boston by Oliver Ditson & Co. N. York by S.T. Gordon. H. Cartwright in Wheeling. Cincinnati by John Church.|Schnabel & Finkeldey lith. 218 Walnut Street. Philadelphia.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1860-2.

A sheet music cover illustrated with an allegorical vignette incorporating the arms of the state of South Carolina. The quickstep was composed by Geo. F. Cole for the Washington Light Infantry and dedicated by the troop to the Savannah Republican Blues, Chatham Artillery, Georgia Hussars, and Volunteer Guards and to the Columbia Richland Rifle Corps and Governors Guards. According to the text it was "played on the Occasion of the reception of the above Companies in Charleston Feb 22nd 1850." The vignette features an arch, "Constitution," resting on three columns labeled "Wisdom," "Justice," and "Moderation." The arch stands in the shadow of a palmetto, South Carolina being known as the Palmetto State. In the left background is a mountainous landscape with a viaduct crossed by a locomotive. On the right, a farmer ploughs his field and ships sail on the water.|Entered . . . 1850 by Wm. Hall & Son. |Lith. of Wm. Endicott & Co. N.Y.|Music composed by Geo. F. Cole for the Washington Light Infantry; published by George F. Cole, Charleston, S.C.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1850-1.

An anti-Lincoln satire, showing the Republican incumbent and his supporters menaced by giant "Copperheads" (Peace Democrats). After a speech on May 1, 1863, asserting that the Civil War was being fought to free blacks and enslave whites, not to save the Union, Clement Laird Vallandigham, leader of the "Copperheads," was arrested and tried for treason. He had defied Union general Ambrose E. Burnside's General Order No. 38, that "the habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy [would] no longer be tolerated" and that offenders would be punished by military procedure. Bowing to Vallandigham's widespread public support, Lincoln reduced the severity of his sentence from imprisonment to banishment behind Confederate lines. Here, three huge copperheads pursue Lincoln, who tears a piece of paper "Constitution & the Union as it was." A fourth snake curls around in front of him. The quotation is from a speech given by Vallandigham in May 1862: "To maintain the Constitution as it is and to restore the Union as it was." Lincoln, who is barefoot and in backwoods dress, drops a paper that reads, "New Black Constitution [signed] A. L. & Co." One of the snakes says, "If you cant read that document drop it." Two others hiss, "Hit him again," and "Ah, you cuss. I thought you had a little nigger on the brain." Lincoln calls to two freedmen who follow him, "Go back to your master, dont think you are free because you are emancipated," but they implore, "Fadderrrr Abrum" and "Take us to your Bussum." A minuscule black man who has fallen from inside Lincoln's hat cries, "Ise going back to de sile." At far left Burnside, who holds a flaming torch, is being choked by a snake representing Vallandigham. The significance of the torch is unclear, although it resembles the lanterns of the Wide-Awakes, active in Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign. Burnside begs, "Oh, dear Clement you are hugging too tight." Vallandigham responds, "Look here if you think to Burn-my Side you will get foiled." Below, a snake eating a black man comments, "I say, Clement, Shriekers go good Down with him." At right a skeleton has just risen from the grave of abolitionist martyr John Brown, whose tombstone is inscribed "Hung in Virginia by Wise [i.e., Virginia governor Henry A. Wise]." On the ground are the words "Removed to No. 7 Hell Gate." The skeleton is exhorted by Satan, ". . . the Devil is to pay come get up and take your share." The skeleton responds, "Sure enough. Come Father let us start for Canada where it is colder." The "What-is-it" of the title refers to a deformed African man recently featured at P. T. Barnum's Museum on Broadway. (See also "An Heir to the Throne, or the Next Republican Candidate.," no. 1860-33.) |Entered . . . 1863 by E.W.T. Nichols . . . Mass.|The Library's impression of the work was deposited for copyright on June 30, 1863.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 138.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1863-8.

The strongly racist character of the Democratic presidential campaign of 1868 is displayed full-blown in this elaborate attack on Reconstruction and Republican support of Negro rights. Horses with the heads of Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour and running mate Francis P. Blair, Jr., pull a fine, ornate carriage in a race with a rude wagon drawn by asses with the heads of Republican candidates Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. The Democratic carriage pulls ahead in the race, heading toward a cheering crowd and a series of floral arches held by young maidens. The U.S. Capitol is visible beyond. In the carriage are four allegorical figures: Liberty, holding the Constitution and a banner which reads "Our Glorious Union Dˆü_ˆüąistinct, like the Billows, One, Like the Sea' This is a White Man's Government!"; Navigation, holding a miniature ship; Agriculture, holding sheaves of wheat and a scythe; and Labor, represented by a bearded man with a hammer and flywheel. In contrast to the Democratic vehicle, the Republican wagon has stalled before a pile of rocks and a cemetery strewn with bones representing "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!" Its wheels are blocked by a large stone "Killing Taxation" and a skeleton. Other stones represent "Ruined Commerce," "$30,000,000 stolen from the Treasury," and "Negro Supremacy." In the wagon are the grim reaper, Pennsylvania representative and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, an unidentified man, a black woman, and an idle black man. Stevens: "Colfax pulls like the d----l but old tangleleg [i.e., Grant] aint worth a d----n! Push at the tailboard, Ben!" Massachusetts representative and former Civil War general Benjamin F. Butler, pushing the wagon from the rear, replies, "I am pushing, Thad! but we are stuck. Seymour is a mile ahead now." Silver spoons protrude from Butler's pocket. (For the origins of Butler's nickname "Silver Spoons," see "The Radical Party on a Heavy Grade," no. 1868-14.) The black woman reassures Stevens, "Don't worry you'sef, honey, or you'll peg out afore we get de paeket for Seymour's in de White House and we's good for Salt River [colloquialism for political disaster]." The black man asks, "War's dis wagon gwine wid dis member ob Congress. I'd jes like to know?" The unidentified man remarks, "The Democracy would not take me so I thought I'd come back & stick by you Uncle Thad, and we'll all go to H-ll together!" Death announces, "My friends 1,000,000 slaughtered soldiers block the wheels--you fooled them, and they now impede your progress!" At bottom right a group of bummers, a term referring to party hangers-on, carpetbaggers, and other disreputable characters, stand in line to buy tickets to Salt River. At left New York "Tribune" editor Horace Greeley invites abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher to play the thimblerig. Nearby a black couple in rags express their desire to return to their former master. At top right, next to the U.S. Capitol, a group of black youths in striped outfits dance and tumble about. In the lower right margin are prices and information regarding ordering copies of the print by mail. "Price 25 cents mailed. 5 for $1.00. 60 for $10.00, 100 for $16.00. Nothing sent C.O.D. Express charges paid by Parties ordering. Address: Bromley & Co. Box 4265. New York City.|Entered . . . l868 by Bromley & Co. . . . New York|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Lorant, p. 303.|Weitenkampf, p. 157.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1868-15.

The “Own It!” Handbook for Adults & Teens is a step-by-step guide to a fourteen topic after-school program, such as a Boys & Girls Club, or an adult Community Building group. For adults, it seeks to bridge divides and  explore what Americans have in common. For teens, it is a transformative after-school, trauma-informed enrichment program. It nurtures academic skills, personal growth and leadership. For all, it uses history to connect our past to our future, as part of the Own Your History® (OYH) Collection. Our inheritances from family history and the American experience provide the starting point for our personal journeys.  Our individual stories are part of a complex American history. We each can choose consciously to write our life story and work for a greater future. Own It! is not “school” but enhances students’ engagement in being creative, making things happen, and  achieving goals. Its mission is to help them step up and enrich their lives, especially by understanding that they live in history.

For a middle school/junior high civics or social studies class, this PowerPoint lesson could be helpful in introducing the U.S. Constitution to the students.

This site includes 12,000 letters, notes, legislation, and other documents from the man considered the Father of the Constitution. These documents (1723-1836), including an autobiography, help illuminate Madison's pivotal role in the Constitutional Convention as well as his nine years in the House of Representatives, his tenure as Secretary of State, and his two terms as our fourth President. Essays discuss Madison's life and his role at the Constitutional Convention.

In this lesson, students will experience the internment of Japanese Americans from San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood. By connecting local experiences with national events, students will understand both the constitutional issues at stake and the human impact of this government policy.

A caricature of Andrew Jackson as a despotic monarch, probably issued during the Fall of 1833 in response to the President's September order to remove federal deposits from the Bank of the United States. The print is dated a year earlier by Weitenkampf and related to Jackson's controversial veto of Congress's bill to recharter the Bank in July 1832. However, the charge, implicit in the print, of Jackson's exceeding the President's constitutional power, however, was most widely advanced in connection not with the veto but with the 1833 removal order, on which the President was strongly criticized for acting without congressional approval. Jackson, in regal costume, stands before a throne in a frontal pose reminiscent of a playing-card king. He holds a "veto" in his left hand and a scepter in his right. The Federal Constitution and the arms of Pennsylvania (the United States Bank was located in Philadelphia) lie in tatters under his feet. A book "Judiciary of the U[nited] States" lies nearby. Around the border of the print are the words "Of Veto Memory", "Born to Command" and "Had I Been Consulted." |Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf cites a variant with 20 lines of letterpress below, attacking Jackson as "a king who has placed himself above the law."|Weitenkampf, p. 26.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1833-4.

A satire touching on some of the major issues in Connecticut politics on the eve of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The two rival factions shown are the "Federals," who represented the trading interests and were for taxes on imports, and the "Antifederals," who represented agrarian interests and were more receptive to paper money issues. The two groups were also divided on the issue of commutation of military pensions. The artist here evidently sides with the Federals. Connecticut is symbolized by a wagon (top center) loaded with debts and paper money, the weight of which causes it to sink slowly into the mud. Its driver warns, "Gentlemen this Machine is deep in the mire and you are divided as to its releaf--" The wagon is pulled in opposite directions by two factions of the state's Council of Twelve. On the left under a beaming sun are five Federal councillors, who proclaim: "Pay Commutation," "Drive them to it," "I abhor the antifederal Faction," and "Comply with Congress." On the right the sky fills with angry storm clouds spewing thunderbolts, while the earth erupts in flames. Below six of the council's Antifederal members pull on their chain crying: "Tax Luxury," "the People are oprest," "curses on to Foederal Govermt.," "Success to Shays" (an allusion to charges that they sympathized with agrarian radicals led by Daniel Shay in Massachusetts), and "Curse Independence." The seventh Antifederal on the council, William Williams (here labeled with his press pseudonym "Agricola"), also appears. He stands defecating at right, with his trousers undone and a small animal--probably a skunk--between his feet. Williams remarks, "I fear & dread the Ides of May" (i.e. the May 15 elections to the upper house). The skunk sprays toward Williams's enemy Samuel Holden Parsons (far right, identified as "S--H--P"), president of the state's Society of the Cincinnati. Parsons, also obscenely bending over, sprays back saying, "A good Shot." In the left middleground, "Cato," a pseudonymous contributor to the "New Haven Gazette," comments, "I despise your Copper" to the man beside him, who holds a Connecticut coin and mutters, "Cur's commutation." In the center a farmer with a plough, rake, and bottle complains, "Takes all to pay taxes." In the left foreground three members of the Connecticut Wits stand on the Mount "Parnassus," and read from a scroll "American Antiquities" (excerpts from their "Anarchiad" published in Connecticut newspapers beginning in October 1786). To the right is the Connecticut shoreline and the buildings of Manhattan, the latter threatened by thunderbolts from the upper right. Three merchant vessels ply a body of water below, "From Connecticut to New York paying L40000 per annum Impost." In the left corner a tiny figure sits at a w7riting desk, reading a paper with the verse: "Tweedles Studdy/as I sit plodding by my taper." This piece alludes to a satirical poem by "Trustless Fox" in the "New Haven Gazette" of November 23, 1786. Its opening lines are: "As I sat plodding by my taper, I wreaked a glance into the paper . . . ." The interpretation given above is largely based on the commentary of a Sotheby's cataloger (see reference below). That writer suggests that "Trustless Fox" and the designer of "The Looking Glass for 1787" may have been one and the same, based on the references to material in the New Haven Press. |Attribution to Amos Doolittle is from the Sotheby's auction catalog.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Sotheby's "Fine Printed and Manuscript Americana." (Catalog of the auction sale April 16, 1988). New York: Sotheby's, 1988, no. 44.|Weitenkampf, p. 11.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1787-1.|Exhibited in: Creating the United States, Library of Congress, 2008.

Presents the most significant documents from our fourth President, James Madison. Most relate to two events in which Madison played a key role: the drafting and ratification of the Constitution (1787-8) and the introduction in the First Federal Congress of the amendments (1789) that became the Bill of Rights. Other documents relate to the freedom of religion and the burning of Washington, D.C., by the British in 1814 -- perhaps the major embarrassment of Madison's career.

This activity gives students the ability to take on the role of the various delegates to the constitutional convention, get to know their beliefs and backgrounds, how they felt about the many issues being debated, what arguments they formulated, and their opinion about the eventual resulting document.

This activity “Becoming aware of the Japanese American Internment Camp Experience” is intended to help students become aware of, and sensitive to, the Japanese American interment camp experience. They will develop a sense of empathy by simulating the situations which Japanese American children faced.

A condemnation of a Van Buren administration plan, put forward by Secretary of War Joel Poinsett, to reform the militia system through creation of a reserve force under regular army officers. The idea was attacked by Whigs as a threat to personal liberty and as a dangerous step toward military despotism. Sarony here reflects this view, and also makes mocking reference to the military's recent, controversial use of bloodhounds in the Seminole Wars in Florida. Several soldiers, holding muskets with fixed bayonets and wearing helmets decorated with skull and crossbones, seize two civilians. One soldier, collaring the man, says, "Come along here you tarnal varmint you neednt think you can talk politics as you use to could, when the presidents what dident Know nothin . . . used to take that old stinking sheepskin instrument called the constitution for their guide." Second soldier: "The bayonet is the instrument what we use old boy." A bystander: "He dont belong to our party no how." Another civilian reacts to the scene, asking: "Is this America - with all her boasted rights & privileges that a man cannot in the open air speak his sentiments: where is the constitution - the charter of our-" Another soldier, seizing him: "Stop, stop sir; you talk of the constitution? its all humbug & federalism. I'll teach you who his excellency the president is: he's the government to deal with I reckon." In the background a troop of bloodhounds receive instruction from a drill sergeant. A barracks and other rows of drilling soldiers can be seen in the distance.|Entered . . . 1840 by H.R. Robinson.|H.R. Robinson, 52 Cortlandt St. N.Y.|Signed: N. Sarony.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 62.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1840-3.

A portrayal of the nocturnal raid on the Charleston post office by a mob of citizens and the burning of abolitionist mails found there in July 1835. Mail sacks are handed through a forced window of the ransacked post office, torn open and bundles of newspapers such as "The Liberator," the Boston "Atlas" and "Commercial Gazette" removed and strewn about. At left, in an open square before a church, a crowd surrounds a bonfire. A sign reading "$20,000 Reward for Tappan" hangs on the wall of the post office, referring to the bounty placed by the city of New Orleans on the head of Arthur Tappan, founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society.|The Library's impression of "New Method of Assorting the Mail" was printed on the same sheet as another abolitionist print, "Southern Ideas of Liberty" (no. 1835-3), and may have been part of a series with that title.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 38.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1835-2.