Ask Civics 101: How Do Recounts Work?

A recount may be undertaken if there are concerns about human error or fraud… and in some states, there are laws about close elections automatically triggering recounts. Recounts can happen in local, state, federal, and even presidential elections. How do they work? And how often does a recount change the outcome of an election? Let's find out.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Presidential Debates

Today we’re exploring the relatively recent phenomenon of Presidential Debates. How are they run? When did we start doing them? Why was George HW Bush looking at his watch?? And most importantly, why should we keep doing them?

Our experts in this episode are debate scholar Alan Schroeder, and Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Janet Brown.

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Episode Resources

Graphic Organizer: Have your students take notes on this sheet while they listen to the episode

Civics 101’s handy VP debate nonverbal expression tracker

C-SPAN’s debate analysis worksheet: Modes of Persuasion, using ethos, logos, and pathos

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NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

Presidential Debates

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:07] September 26, 1960, nine thirty p.m. The show Peter Gunn had just finished airing on NBC and then 66 million Americans tuned in to watch a revolution in the process for selecting a president.

Howard K. Smith: [00:00:24] Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion of issues in the current political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency. The candidates need no introduction.

Howard K. Smith: [00:00:41] The Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon,

[00:00:44] Vote for Nixon and Lodge November eight.

Howard K. Smith: [00:00:46] And the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy. According to rules...

Nick Capodice: [00:00:57] I'm Nick Capodice

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:58] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:59] And this [00:01:00] is one Civics 101 one, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. And today we're talking about the relatively recent tradition of presidential debates. When did they start? Who decides how they're run? Why do we do them? And what we should be looking for when we watch them? Hannah what is your first debate memory?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:19] I would say it's more like an entire season of debates. It was during the Obama McCain election of 2008. And I I knew that I would be turning 18 a couple of days after the election. So I watched these debates with a great deal of pain in my heart because I knew I wouldn't actually be allowed to vote in that election.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:41] I think I saw Saturday Night Live parodies of the debates before I saw the real ones.

Dana Carvey as George HW Bush: [00:01:45] A thousand points of light. Stay the course.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:51] I think my first visceral staying up late, watching the debate memory is October of 1992 between actually, I should say among, George [00:02:00] H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:03] Oh, that's right. That is the first and so far only three candidate presidential debate. That's so cool. You opened with a clip from the 1960 debate between Nixon and Kennedy, which I know was the first televised debate. But it's certainly not the first debate, is it?

Nick Capodice: [00:02:25] Well, here's Alan Schroeder, he's professor emeritus at Northeastern University and he's the author of several books on presidential debates.

Alan Schroeder: [00:02:33] Well, there were the live debates such as the Lincoln Douglas debates, the senatorial debates of 1858.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:39] 1858. Those debates were for a Senate seat, not for the presidential election. But what's interesting about them is they were published two years later when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were the presidential candidates. But until the late 19th century, candidates for president did little personal campaigning. Their supporters did most of the campaigning [00:03:00] and attacking of opponents.

Alan Schroeder: [00:03:01] So pre broadcast, there were debates held in person between candidates. They were these big events where spectators would show up by the hundreds and bring picnic baskets and sort of make an all day activity out of it.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:17] But once broadcasting radio and then television came on the scene, there were more attempts to introduce political debates.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:24] What was it in 1960 then that caused this change? Why the debates then?

Alan Schroeder: [00:03:29] They were really a creation of the television networks of that era who wanted to be taken more seriously. You know, they were entertainment media, but not so much information media. So the networks in the late 50s saw an opportunity to legitimize themselves by doing political debates on television. And they got John F. Kennedy on board. And once he was on board, Nixon sort of couldn't get out of it without looking like a coward. And so that's how we got the first debates [00:04:00] in 1960.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:01] So Americans who listened to that first debate on the radio were pretty split on a winner. But television viewers enormously favored Kennedy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:10] Why? What happened?

Alan Schroeder: [00:04:11] Nixon had been hospitalized before the first debate and had only recently been released. So he was he had lost a lot of weight. He was pallid. He was lured by the Kennedy people into thinking that John F. Kennedy hadn't used makeup. So by God, he wasn't a use makeup either. And he does look bad. You know, you look at it now and it is you know, he is this scarecrow that the sweating scarecrow that history remembers him has. But you could definitely see how uncomfortable he was and and ill at ease and ill in general.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:49] So in this debate, Nixon and Kennedy were seated when not taking questions and then they would rise to speak behind a shared podium to a panel of news reporters.

Richard Nixon: [00:04:58] I would suggest, Mr. Vanocur, that, [00:05:00] you know, the president that was probably a facetious remark. I would also suggest as far as...

Nick Capodice: [00:05:06] And when Nixon was behind the podium, you could sort of see him bending his knee in discomfort as he answered questions. Now, Kennedy Kennedy had prepared for this debate. He had studied camera angles. He'd read a lot about TV. He wore makeup.

John F. Kennedy: [00:05:21] I come out of the Democratic Party, which in this century has produced Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and which supported and sustain these programs.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:30] But Nixon treated this just like another campaign event and refused to wear makeup.

Alan Schroeder: [00:05:35] Nixon himself went on what he called a milkshake diet, where he just started pounding the calories and in a hope of gaining weight again and did look better in the later debates. He also learned the hard way to use makeup.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:49] I feel like there's so much more to lose in a debate than there is to gain, like a single gaffe, a single mistake, or even what [00:06:00] you look like can affect your electability.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:03] Yeah, maybe this is why after 1960, there were no presidential debates until 1976.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:10] Ok, this brings me to the question of who decides how these things are going to go. Like, are they seated or are they standing? How much time do they get? Who asks the questions? Do the candidates fight with each other behind the scenes and then come up with a mutual solution?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:28] They do not.

Alan Schroeder: [00:06:29] Well, every general election, presidential debates since 1988, it has been sponsored and staged by the Commission on Presidential Debates. And then the candidates can either agree or disagree and they'll try to negotiate a little bit around the margins. But basically, they don't have as much clout. The campaigns don't have as much clout anymore as the debate commission.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:52] I didn't know that there was a commission on presidential debates.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:55] I didn't either!

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:56] What do they do?

Janet Brown: [00:06:57] The Commission on Presidential Debates is [00:07:00] a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation based in Washington, D.C. We were created in 1987 and have been doing the general election, presidential and vice presidential debates ever since 1988. We select the moderator and the moderator selects the questions which are not known to the commission or to the candidates.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:24] This is Janet Brown, the executive director for the Commission on Presidential Debates. I called her a week before the first debate of this election cycle.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:32] How are you, Janet?

Janet Brown: [00:07:34] I'm insane. Thank you for asking.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:36] How many debates has she run?

Janet Brown: [00:07:38] 30 debates,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:39] 30?

Nick Capodice: [00:07:40] 30! The rules that the commission sets are public knowledge, like the format, who the moderator is, the dates. But there are non-public agreements as well. It's not all out in the open. In 2012, a Time reporter published Obama and Romney's memorandum of understanding. That's a document that's the secret [00:08:00] rules for a debate. And that included no direct questions from one candidate to the other, no requests for a show of hands, no call outs to any non-family member of the audience, and an agreed upon comfortable temperature. To be clear, the commission manages presidential and vice presidential debates, not the primary debates. Those are run by the party. And as such, they can get a little wacky.

Rand Paul: [00:08:23] I don't trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug and if you want to give him a big hug again.

Ronald Reagan: [00:08:23]  I am paying for this microphone.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:39] For presidential debates, the commission adopted the journalist panel format that we heard about from the 1960 debate. That's a format that continued in every debate from 1976 on.

Janet Brown: [00:08:49] But it became clear that if you could reduce the number of other participants on the stage and focus more time and attention on the candidates, that's what serves [00:09:00] the public best. So starting in 1992, we experimented with having at least part of one debate that was run by a single moderator.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:10] I'm curious about the town hall format of debates where the audience is a bunch of uncommitted voters and they're speaking directly to the candidates. When did we start doing that?

Janet Brown: [00:09:22] Town hall format actually goes back to 92. It was introduced that year and has proven very popular with the public for one primary reason. People identify with the citizens who have been selected to ask questions of the candidates. As you can well imagine, it changes the dynamic if a candidate is answering a question from a citizen as opposed to a journalist.

Anderson Cooper: [00:09:46] One more question from Ken Bone about energy policy. Ken?

Ken Bone: [00:09:50] What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power [00:10:00] plant workers?

Janet Brown: [00:10:01] And the nature of those conversations is is quite different than it is when you have a journalist who is conducting the whole debate and and asking the questions. It's a particular privilege to work on those because needless to say, those citizens don't do television on a daily basis. This is this is a a very unusual thing. They come to it with such seriousness and sense of purpose on behalf of their fellow citizens. And that's that's a particularly meaningful one to be a part of.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:36] How do the candidates even prepare for these?

Nick Capodice: [00:10:38] They each hire someone to be their sparring partner. It's a crucial role in preparing for debates. Their sparring partner is usually a savvy politician who impersonates their opponent like not their accent or clothing or anything, but their persona, their ideas, the way they might phrase questions and answers. And they do mock debates for days on end.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:58] So Janet told us that the [00:11:00] candidates don't know the questions that they're going to be asked. But when they learn who the moderator is going to be, do they prepare based on who that person is?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:11] Yeah, they do. Here's a clip of former President George H.W. Bush talking to journalist Jim Lehrer about his opinion on debates.

George HW Bush: [00:11:18]  Ugly. I don't like em,

Jim Lehrer: [00:11:21] Why not?

George HW Bush: [00:11:22] Well, partially, I wasn't to good at them. Secondly, there's some of it's contrived show business. He promised to get the answers ahead of time. Now, this guy, you got Bernie Shaw on the panel, and here's what he's probably going to ask you. You got Lesley Stahl over here and she's known to go for this and that. And you can be sure I remember what Leslie's is going to ask...

Nick Capodice: [00:11:43] And as we learned with Nixon in 1960, the visuals of a debate can matter as much as what is actually said. Alan told me one of the most telling moments in debate history involved the first George Bush glancing down at his watch during a town hall debate, giving the impression to the studio audience and [00:12:00] the audience at home that he had no interest in being there now.

George HW Bush: [00:12:03] Was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that's why I was looking at it. Only 10 more minutes of this crap.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:10] That was the town hall debate where a member of the audience asked Bush this question.

[00:12:14] Yes. How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?

Nick Capodice: [00:12:20] And Bush actually said, I don't get it. And he stayed behind his podium and he honestly did not answer the question.

Alan Schroeder: [00:12:26] And then Bill Clinton comes in right after him and walks to the edge of the stage and directly engages the woman and asks her about her life and empathizes, as only Bill Clinton could do.

[00:12:38] How has it affected you again? You know, people who lost their... Their home. Well, I've been governor of a small state for 12 years. I'll tell you how it's affected me every year. Congress and the president...

Alan Schroeder: [00:12:54] And so, you know, it was it was a telling moment that I think matters, even though it's [00:13:00] trivial in a way, it matters because presidential campaigns strive so hard to control everything that goes out to the public. And so when something busts through the veneer like that, it's, I think, our job as voters to pay attention.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:18] You've got the moderated debate. You've got the town hall style debate. Are there any plans for like any other kind of debate format in the future?

Nick Capodice: [00:13:27] Yeah, Janet said there were some ideas boppin around.

Janet Brown: [00:13:28] But if you look back at different debates, there are ones that stand out. And as it happens in Massachusetts and senatorial and gubernatorial races from some years ago, where essentially the moderator served almost as a timekeeper and the candidates were willing to do debates that that essentially were conversations between the candidates.

Janet Brown: [00:13:55] From our work, it's clear that the public wants the maximum [00:14:00] amount of attention and time focused on the candidates. That's who they're trying to learn about. So if we can continue to work toward having the candidates with minimal intrusion, interference by the moderator, that obviously is what the public really finds very, very valuable.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:20] And the commission is responsive and flexible to these debates as they happen. After the first debate in this cycle,

Chris Wallace: [00:14:28] Your campaign agreed that both sides would get two minute answers uninterrupted. Well, your side agreed to it. And why don't you observe what your campaign agreed to...

Nick Capodice: [00:14:43] They made a public statement that they would revisit the format and the rules and a source close to the commission said they were considering cutting mics if the candidates kept interrupting each other.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:53] I will say it did recently read that people tuning in to the Trump [00:15:00] Biden debate, the most recent one, 84 percent, said that the debate wasn't going to change their mind either way. So what is the point of a debate if not to change minds?

Alan Schroeder: [00:15:15] I think debates are very important, even if they don't really decide the election, because there's not much during the campaign that belongs to the people, to the voters. But debates do. The journalists have to step aside. The candidates have to respond spontaneously and in real time. And we just don't get that many peeks behind the curtain. And so when one is offered to us, I think we have to pay attention as far as what to keep an eye on during the debate. One of the things that always fascinates me is how do the candidates treat each other? You know, what are they doing when the other person is speaking? What are their facial [00:16:00] expressions toward the other person? And I think you can kind of get some insight into them as human beings just based on that that very little point. How do we treat other people?

Janet Brown: [00:16:13] At the end of the day, they are individual human beings and they're running the gauntlet of a very public and rough and tumble campaign or service. And you are constantly reminded of the poignancy that these are people and that their decisions will involve those closest to them and change their lives.

Howard K. Smith: [00:16:36] I've been asked by the candidates to thank the American networks and the affiliated stations for providing time and facilities for this joint appearance. Other debates in the series will be announced later and will be on different subjects. This is Howard K. Smith. Good night from Chicago.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:02] All [00:17:00] right, that's debate.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:03] No, it isn't.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:04] Yes, it is.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:06] Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with you Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:10] Jacqui Fulton knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a close personal friend of Jacqui's. And Senator, you're no Jacqui's Jack,

Nick Capodice: [00:17:17] Erika Janik is our executive producer and she paid for this microphone.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:20] Music in this episode by Chad Crouch, Dyala, Scott Holmes and that composer with the beats so nice and crispy, Chris Zabriskie.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:27] You like political ephemera and deeper dives into these topics. Don't you? Please join our biweekly newsletter, Extra Credit. It's snappy. It's fun. It's at civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:38] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:50] Oh, come on, do you think I'm not going to put this in here, the greatest debate zinger of all time, we referenced it in the episode, but [00:18:00] you just got to hear it. 1988 vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen.

Dan Quayle: [00:18:06] I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency. I will be prepared to deal with the people and the Bush administration, that unfortunate event, whatever occur.

[00:18:21] Senator Bentsen?

Lloyd Bentsen: [00:18:24] Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Freedom of the Press: Part 1

Note: There is a more recent, updated version of this episode - check our episodes page!

The only working-class job enshrined in the Bill of Rights, a free press is essential to the health of the democracy. The citizens deserve to know what’s going on, so the framers made sure that news could be printed and information disseminated. But how does the press actually do that? Are they upholding their end of the bargain? What does the best version of the press and the news look like?

Helping us report this one out are Melissa Wasser, Michael Luo and Erin Coyle.

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

Freedom of the Press: Part 1

Archival from case: [00:00:01] The case, of course, raises important.

[00:00:05] Difficult problems about the constitutional right of free speech and free press.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:15] June 13th, 1971, New York Times subscribers wake up to a story about U.S. entanglement in Vietnam. Now, at this point, we've been involved in the Vietnam War for about a decade.

[00:00:27] It was the first televised war, the first time Americans could witness the violence in real time.

Archival from Vietnam War: [00:00:33] Someone dead over there, Sergeant.

[00:00:35] Where? Hit in the crater, sir. This is the worst way to go, everyone agrees.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:42] And this New York Times article reveals that the Pentagon has done a study into three decades worth of U.S. involvement with Vietnam.

Archival from case: [00:00:49] On Monday, the attorney general sent a telegram to The New York Times asking them to stop and to return the document. The New York Times refused.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:59] Oh, [00:01:00] the Pentagon Papers.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:01] Yeah. The infamous Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the executive branch had lied to both Congress and the American people about the extent of its involvement in Southeast Asia.

[00:01:13] The report was leaked in The New York Times, wrote about it and published some of its contents.

[00:01:18] The attorney general is like, you can't do that. You have to give those papers back and stop writing about them on time said no.

Archival from case: [00:01:25] And on Tuesday, the United States uh started this suit.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:31] You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:33] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:34] And today we are talking about the civilian job that was so important to our framers, they enshrined it in the Bill of Rights, the free press, the very thing that hung in the balance of this Pentagon Papers case.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:48] Hold on before we take a step further. And maybe this is glaringly obvious to everyone, but what is the press?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:56] The press is a little hard to define these days, [00:02:00] in part because anyone can publish or broadcast anything online. But ideally, the press are people who seek out research and verify the truth and then share that truth with others, people who work for newspapers, radio stations, magazines and television networks, people who learn as much as possible about a subject and then pass all of that information on to news consumers. So those are, you know, readers, listeners and viewers who want information about the country.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:33] Ok, take me back to the Pentagon Papers.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:36] All right. The New York Times says, no, we are not giving these papers up and we are going to keep writing about them. It is our First Amendment right.

[00:02:44] This case went from district court to the Supreme Court in 12 days.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:49] What was the United States arguing in the case?

Archival from case: [00:02:52] On the claim, as I understand it, that the disclosure of this information would result in an immediate grave threat [00:03:00] to the security of the United States. However, it was acquired and however it's classified.

[00:03:05] Yes, Mr. Justice.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:06] An immediate grave threat to the security of the United States.

[00:03:10] That is something I feel like we hear a lot when it comes to executive privilege, that the president can keep certain conversations and events private because they're protecting national security.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:21] Which is exactly what the president was claiming in this case.

Melissa Wasser: [00:03:25] President Nixon claimed that he had executive authority to basically force the Times to not publish this classified information. And so the court had to kind of wrestle with the question of whether the constitutional freedom of the press by the First Amendment was less of a need than the need of President Nixon in the executive branch to maintain secrecy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:53] This is Melissa Wasser.

Melissa Wasser: [00:03:54] I am a policy analyst for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:58] Nixon claims he can [00:04:00] basically suspend the Times' his First Amendment right to freedom of the press.

Melissa Wasser: [00:04:05] And that dealt with what's called a prior restraint.

[00:04:09] And so basically, the court said if you want to exercise a prior restraint on information, you want to stop it before it comes out. If you want to exercise that prior restraint, you have to make sure that there's evidence that you show that by publishing that information would cause a grave and irreparable danger.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:30] Prior restraint, by the way, means preventing somebody from publishing or saying something. So in this case, preventing The New York Times from continuing to publish about the Pentagon Papers. And also, I want to point out that grave and irreparable danger, it's not anywhere in the Constitution. That idea comes from Schenck v United States, a 1919 Supreme Court case that established that First Amendment rights could be restrained, but only and this is a big but only if their expression resulted in a, quote, clear [00:05:00] and present danger to the country.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:03] And in this case, New York Times, the United States, the court ruled that it was on the Nixon administration to show strong evidence of that clear and present danger.

[00:05:14] And that it had not sufficiently done so.

Melissa Wasser: [00:05:18] And so at least in that case, the Supreme Court held that The New York Times had the right to print the materials, and that's how we got the Pentagon Papers out into the world.

Interview with NYT post-case: [00:05:28] Well, my reaction was very simply one of joy, one of delight, and one of the now we'll go back to business as normal

[00:05:37] at the Times.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:40] The important thing to take from this case is that the Supreme Court really came at it from a strong defense of the freedom of the press clause like they can. I just have you read this quote from Justice Hugo Black's opinion?

Nick Capodice: [00:05:53] Sure let me try my best Hugo Black here...

[00:05:56] The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The [00:06:00] government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bear the secrets of government and inform the people.

[00:06:14] So Justice Black makes no buts about it does he, the press needs to be protected.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:18] And he gives us the reason why, he says it right there in the opinion, the press was protected to expose the secrets of government and inform the people. If you think about the checks and balances that keep everybody honest and on track in U.S. government, the press acts as this additional check from the outside.

Melissa Wasser: [00:06:39] It's up to the press to be that accountability measure to keep the government transparent and make sure that people are always aware of what the government does. And so, I mean, the press is so vitally important, especially today, when there's been a lot of protests around racial justice. There's [00:07:00] been a full pandemic that we're currently living and working in. And people want information. People want to know what Congress does and how that affects them, especially when it comes to additional unemployment benefits or, you know, the stimulus check in the first round of the Cares Act, you know, people were really concerned.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:19] We know what we know about the daily workings of government because reporters ask questions, they investigate. They track bills and budgets. They keep a finger on the pulse of government, and then they pass it on to the people.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:34] I think we should point out to Hannah that a good journalist or news organization doesn't just hear about something and pass it on. They do their research. They make sure it's true before they share it. And if they can't verify it, they don't share it. And if it doesn't serve their audience, they don't put it out there.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:53] Yeah, that's one important thing about the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times spent weeks reading [00:08:00] that report before they decided what were the most necessary and responsible pieces of information to share with the public. They didn't just release the whole thing without context at a much lower stakes level. When I was making this episode, I didn't just speak with people and share what they said. I researched freedom of the press before and after these interviews. I even researched what our guests talked about to make sure that I could talk about it in a way that made sense. And I fact checked.

[00:08:30] And this episode went through multiple rounds of editing before it went out into the world,

Nick Capodice: [00:08:34] Because the whole point of journalism ideally is that it's serving the people. And again, I say ideally because a lot of the information that's out there is not researched, it's not fact checked or edited, but in a government that's supposed to be by and for the people, access to true information about the government is a necessity.

[00:08:54] Thus, the freedom of the press clause.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:57] Which is just sitting there in the middle of the First [00:09:00] Amendment right, it goes, 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. The press both have a First Amendment right and disseminate the information that allows us to exercise our First Amendment rights before we go any further.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:31] And I think we should point out that you and I are beholden to this.

[00:09:37] We are members of the press, and it's not just about rights, it's about responsibility. We are supposed to find and tell the truth so people who listen to us know the truth.

Michael Luo: [00:09:50] So. So the Hutchins' Commission report is kind of considered responsible for the idea of social responsibility as [00:10:00] a notion in the press.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:02] This is Michael Luo.

[00:10:03] I'm the editor of newyorker.com, which means I run the online editorial operation of The New Yorker. And when I can, I try to write. Usually about politics and media.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:18] Michael recently wrote about this thing called the Hutchins' Commission.

Michael Luo: [00:10:21] Which was a group that met in the 1940s and produced this little book called A Free and Responsible Press. And one of the things that they talked about in the book that I think is a good summary of the importance of the press and democracy is it talks about how a free society depends on the consumption of ideas and the press is an essential component of that traffic of ideas.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:50] Now, this is a moment in history where publishers were huge, powerful entities and many members of the public viewed the press as self-interested [00:11:00] and corporate, you know, just trying to commercialize and get bigger. And in the 1940s, fascism was booming in Europe and Americans feared that it could infiltrate the U.S.. So you've got this existential threat and mistrust of the information being spread to the American public. So the publisher of Time and Life Magazines commissioned this inquiry into how the media can best serve democracy. This group gets together to figure out whether the press is doing its job of keeping everyone informed in order to keep democracy alive.

Michael Luo: [00:11:35] They kind of laid out a bunch of key functions of the press, things like providing a daily accurate account of the of the day's events, providing a forum for common discussion, being accessible to everyone, providing a representative picture of society. And just across the board on all of these things, [00:12:00] they were just saying that the press fell short.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:03] That doesn't sound too dissimilar to today. People are worried now about democracy being threatened and people are dissatisfied with the press, which is part of the reason why Michael wrote about this 1940s report today in 2020.

[00:12:16] And a lot of what the commission found wrong with the press are things that we still hear today.

Michael Luo: [00:12:22] A lot of the things actually they found sound familiar today, like they blame sort of the rush to scoops and sort of novelty, they called it. They blamed business interests. They blamed being the press, being vulnerable to manipulation and things like that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:38] At the end of the book, the commission offered some solutions and the focus was on social responsibility. The press had a lot of power, so they had to wield that properly, give citizens the information they needed to foster a healthy, strong democracy.

Michael Luo: [00:12:54] The ultimate conclusion and the one that the one that I think is [00:13:00] still really relevant today was that it called upon the press to that the burden was upon the press itself to fix itself and to improve itself.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:08] I'm always down with self-improvement, but how does the press fix itself, especially when good journalism is often drowned out by a flood of misinformation?

Michael Luo: [00:13:18] You know, we're kind of swimming in information. We're constantly encountering information. A lot of people actually do not on social media, not go on looking for news, but they kind of bump into it. And the question is like, how much news can you actually absorb like that?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:33] Michael has thought a lot about what would help us be more informed citizens. And for him, one potential answer is journalism with more context that goes more in-depth and that is consumed more slowly, which is tricky. Right, because how do you convince people to basically eat their vegetables when there's so much candy out there? How do you convince news organizations to grow vegetables when candy is [00:14:00] the thing that sells and selling is what supports the news?

Nick Capodice: [00:14:05] First off, roasting vegetables instead of boiling them. That's a good start, but really making them more enticing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:14] What I find really fascinating about all of this is that our understanding of freedom of the press and how it's tangled up in social responsibility, that is something that happened over centuries of journalism. We can't know for sure what the framers meant. Right. But we created a very weighty freedom and obligation out of that clause in the Bill of Rights. I want to introduce you to one more guest here.

Erin Coyle: [00:14:37] Hello, I'm Erin Coyle. I am an associate professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. And I teach journalism, law and ethics and journalism, writing and reporting. My research focuses on freedom of expression.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:54] I asked Erin, you know, we know, for example, what Justice Hugo Black thinks [00:15:00] the framers meant by not abridging the freedom of the press. But what did the framers say they meant?

Erin Coyle: [00:15:05] They were probably thinking more about the word liberty and freedom at that time. From what my reading shows. And the press was different then than it is now. So scholarship really indicates that at that time they were thinking about printers and there was a history of having government censorship of printers, meaning that to be able to print and distribute information, people would have to get permission from some government authority to be able to print and distribute the information.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:47] And that, of course, is an easy way to control what citizens are allowed to learn. If the government can say something cannot be printed, then it cannot be distributed. And that means any number of things [00:16:00] will never come to be known by the public.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:02] It was actually a pretty vulnerable choice for the framers to make when you think about it, preventing ostensibly for all time the people in charge from limiting what gets said about them. But then again, those same men had recently printed an attack on their own government by way of the Declaration of Independence when they wrote this amendment.

[00:16:20] So our nation really began with a form of press freedom.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:24] That's both really important and pretty basic freedom of the press and journalism means a lot more today. It means journalists are protected from certain retaliation. If they report on the government, it means a reporter can request information from and about the executive branch. It even means that a news team should be allowed to determine what they report on without the business interests of their organization getting in the way. I asked Erin where all of that came from.

Erin Coyle: [00:16:56] So some of this comes from journalists. The notion of [00:17:00] independence and financial independence comes from journalists. We can't have something like that coming from the government because of the First Amendment. But the discussion of press freedom is really different today than it could have been in the eighteen hundreds. For one thing, the Supreme Court really addressed press freedom as something that could be applied to protect journalists against state laws as well as federal laws.

[00:17:35] For the first time in the early 1960s.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:38] It seems like, as freedom of the press has been strengthened in the courts, so too has the responsibility of the press to exercise itself responsibly. Like, if you're demanding access and protection, you have to do it in part on the basis of serving democracy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:58] I talked earlier about journalism [00:18:00] being about not simply publishing or sharing a piece of information, but about sitting with that information, making judgment calls, about whether it's a helpful, safe thing to share journalism, freedom of the press, social responsibility to support an informed citizenry. It's not just about what we do print or broadcast.

Erin Coyle: [00:18:22] It's also about what we don't is one point that isn't often talked about with New York Times versus the United States.

[00:18:32] Well, journalists from The New York Times took weeks to carefully go through those documents and took their time to find out are these valid? Is this real information? And they didn't just put everything online like we would today. They didn't print an entire classified report. They [00:19:00] selected the information that was most important for information. No, journalists make really important decisions and we trust journalists to be working for the public's interest. And there are times that means that we have to consider people's safety.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:25] I think my biggest takeaway from all of these discussions is that the press is powerful.

[00:19:30] The framers made the press powerful by giving it the freedom to print without requiring permission. And the press and the courts over time made the press even more powerful. And such as that, power grew, so did our responsibility.

[00:19:45] We taught our readers, listeners and viewers to expect certain things from us. So what does that mean in an era of widespread protest, fake news and a worldwide pandemic? [00:20:00] Check out part two of freedom of the press to see if I can rise to that responsibility.

[00:20:19] This episode of Civics 101 was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our team includes Jacqui Fulton. Erika Janik exercises a lot of prior restraint when it comes to dealing with our shenanigans. We have long-planned to find a way to answer listener questions directly, and we have finally done it. We've got a new thing called Ask Civics 101. It's broadcast here in New Hampshire every Monday and goes into our podcast feed every Friday. It's simple, you email or tweet us a question and we find the answers and make you an episode. We're all just trying to figure out how things work around here. Civics 101 is supported in part by the [00:21:00] Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Ask Civics 101: Why Is the American Campaign Season so Long?

In the United States, campaign season begins long before primaries and caucuses, and ages before the general election. In the past few presidential elections, some people announced their candidacy nearly two years before election day. And listener Charlie wrote in to ask, "Might you consider discussing why the election ‘season’ takes approximately two years?" Indeed we might, Charlie! And we did! Here comes another installment of Ask Civics 101 with NHPR broadcast host Peter Biello where we tackle why, exactly, the American election season is so long.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Ask Civics 101: Why Do We Have the Electoral College?

The Electoral College was created as a bulwark, a barrier between the people and the vote for the president. The founders feared giving people too much power so they created a system that put a check on the people's vote by "men of virtue" (and they were all men at the time). It is because of the Electoral College that a person can win the presidency even if they lose the popular vote — but how does it work, exactly?

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Introducing Ask Civics 101: What Are We?

We get a lot of questions here at the show. While we try to answer them in some form or another with our full-length episodes, we’ve always wanted a way to answer you directly. So we launched Ask Civics 101! Send us your questions and we’ll get to the bottom of things for you.

Our inaugural episode addresses a question (and critique) that we’ve received for years here at the show. It's an oft-lobbed claim, "We're not a democracy, we're a republic." And it's half true! We are a republic. But we're also a democracy.

What does that actually mean, and why is the question important? For our first-ever Ask Civics 101, we're answering this not-so-straightforward question: what are we?

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Declaration Revisited: The Declaration of Sentiments

The Declaration of Independence called George III a tyrant. And in 1848, a group of women’s rights activists mirrored our founding document to accuse men of the same crime. Today in our final revisit to the Declaration of Independence, we explore the Declaration of Sentiments, the document at the heart of the women’s suffrage movement.

Our guest is Laura Free, host of the podcast Amended and professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

In this episode students will learn about: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Seneca Falls, grievances in the DoS vs the DoI, the 19th amendment, and lack of equality among all women.

Episode Resources

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Text of the Declaration of Sentiments from Women’s Rights National Historic Park

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Episode Segments

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Transcript

Declaration of Sentiments

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

[00:00:04] The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.

[00:00:17] To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:26] One of the things that I like about the Declaration of Independence, though, the more we visited, the more problematic things we find in it. But one thing I can say I like about it is its directness.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:36] Yeah, it does a lot in only 1300 words.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:39] It's an argument. It's a solid argument in four parts. First, the preamble saying what the document is, then a statement of human rights, and the claim that when a government doesn't give you those rights, it's your job to alter or abolish it. And then we got the grievances and finally the action: because of the above, we're ending this relationship.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:58] And throughout this series, we [00:01:00] have talked about the immediate criticism and accusations of hypocrisy in it. And yet it lives on. It lives on as this core of our American identity. So what if you didn't just criticize it or call it to task? What if you used its power of argument as a tool to fight inequality?

Laura Free: [00:01:20] Right. In 1848 in America, probably every schoolchild was forced to memorize this document. Everyone knew the words. They all knew the rhythm, the cadence. It would have been a deeply familiar text to them.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:35] I'm Nick Capodice

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:36] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:37] And this is Civics 101. Today is our third and final revisit to the Declaration of Independence, and we're exploring the Declaration of Sentiments, the document at the heart of the women's rights movement. And we spoke with Laura Free. She's a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and she's also the host of Amended, a new wonderful podcast about the myths and realities of the long fight for women's suffrage.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:59] So we should [00:02:00] start with what the Declaration of Sentiments actually is.

Laura Free: [00:02:03] Yeah, so the Declaration of Sentiments is essentially the central manifesto of the early women's rights movement. It was a text that was created by a group of women, one of whom was Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls in 1848 in upstate New York.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:23] Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an activist and one of the first leaders of the women's rights movement. She helped organize the Seneca Falls convention and wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which was an extremely influential document at the time. Judith Welman, she's a historian of the convention at Seneca Falls, she called it the single most important factor in spreading news of the women's rights movement around the country. Quick side note. When Laura was referencing the Declaration of Sentiments in the interview, she was reading from this massive reproduction of it.

Laura Free: [00:02:55] I have this in front of me and you're going to laugh because this was a gift to me [00:03:00] from a student. And for Halloween, when my my kid was seven, maybe, she wanted to be Eliza-witch Cady Stanton. So she wore a witch hat and with the declaration of sentiments around her neck,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:13] That's adorable. Of course, if you're the daughter of Laura Free that's how you're gonna go. But why 1848? And what makes them think that this is the way to go?

Nick Capodice: [00:03:24] Well, starting in the early 1800s, a small number of women begin to group up and push back against societal restrictions against them. And in 1840, Stanton goes to London for an antislavery convention. And on the boat ride back, she befriends abolitionist activist and Quaker Lucretia Coffin Mott and the two of them on the boat start to plan their own convention, one to further the cause of women's rights. In 1848, Mott and others put an announcement in the Seneca County Courier, calling a convention to discuss the social, [00:04:00] civil and religious conditions and rights of women.

Laura Free: [00:04:03] And so that goes out just to sort of the locals. And so they sit around and they start talking and they're like, well, what are we going to do at this meeting? We've never had a women's rights meeting before. Or maybe we should, you know, have something that people should talk about and maybe even vote on. Stanton herself claims credit for this, but it's not clear that that she's the one who came up with the idea. But someone said, you know what, if we used the Declaration of Independence as a model, what if that was our guide? And I'm sure everyone went, oh, yeah. So Stanton does do a lot of the work of making of writing this. And so she she takes the original declaration. She goes home and she says, OK, let's let's let's fix this. Right. Let's fix this for women. And, you know, the of course, the best line is that is that the first one of the second [00:05:00] paragraph where she says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. Right. Like that right there would have signaled to everyone who saw it, who listened to it, who heard it read be read out loud. Whoa, wait, something's different. Something's different here. And perhaps, you know, at that point, a lot of people would have accepted the term men to. All humans without thinking about it, right, it was it was often a term used to mean people generally, but the fact that she put in women, there was a wake up call in some ways for for the people listening.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:43] The original declaration says all men are created equal. And as we've said in several episodes, women, people of color, enslaved Americans, Native Americans and white non landowners were not included in the declaration of sentiments is even shorter than the Declaration [00:06:00] of Independence. It's under a thousand words, but it uses that same powerful four part argument.

Laura Free: [00:06:06] And the other thing that Stanton does in the Declaration of Sentiments that really parallels well to the original. As you know, the whole declaration is in some ways a wake up letter to the king, right. Like Yo King, here's what you've done. And Stanton takes that format and she applies it to men and women. So she's like, yo, men, here's what you've done that have have made all of the women in America unequal. She's, you know, calling them out here.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:32] And it's an exhaustive list. It's got 16 grievances against "He" the first of which is he has not ever permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:46] He has never permitted her to vote. And that one, that's the first one. It was the most controversial at the time.

Laura Free: [00:06:53] Stanton read them this draft version of the Declaration of Sentiments. And Lucretia Mott says to her in her in her lovely [00:07:00] Quaker 19th century language, she says, Lizzy, thee will make us ridiculous. That the right to vote, the demand for the right to vote was so was so radical. It's going to be problematic. Now, there are some issues with that. There are lots of people prior to this moment who had been asking for the right to vote. Right. Women voted in New Jersey until 1807. There were women in colonial Massachusetts that we know who voted. So, you know, it's not it's not completely unheard of, but it was fairly radical. And so when the meeting takes place, everyone all of these ideas are raised and people are like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then they get they get they get to voting rights and the convention. You can you can kind of imagine maybe like took a kind of a deep breath, like, OK, what are we gonna do with this one. And and Stanton herself, it was her first time speaking in public and she professed to being very nervous and felt like she didn't do a good job defending defending this provision. And so she turns [00:08:00] to Frederick Douglass.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:01] Douglass, who escaped slavery just 10 years earlier, became one of the most influential abolitionists in American history. He gave speeches around the world advocating for equality and ending slavery, and he attended the convention in Seneca Falls.

Laura Free: [00:08:15] He says something along the lines of without the ballot. None of these other changes are going to be possible because women have to have sufficient power to make these other things stick, essentially, and that the vote is is the way to do that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:32] I find it really interesting that the question of getting women the right to vote was the most controversial because there are some grievances in there that are quite advanced for the time.

Laura Free: [00:08:42] Yeah, the declaration asks for equal pay, for equal work for women. Right. You know, something that still is not achieved in America today.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:51] I mean, equal pay women only earned the right to sue their employers for unequal pay in 2010.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:58] Yeah, and another grievance Stanton [00:09:00] accuses men of playing God.

Laura Free: [00:09:02] You know, the language she used. She says he has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action when that belongs to her conscience and her God. So basically, she's saying men put themselves above God by trying to tell women what they can and can't do. And so in some ways, she's using religion to indict men further for their bad behavior. So it's not just that men tell women what to do. Men are trying to take over and become God. And so that, I think, gives it a degree of of power for her listeners or her or her listeners, her readers or whoever would see this. They they would they maybe would resonate with that and say, wow, nobody should get in between somebody and God.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:53] Oh, it's so interesting because that's that's kind of the best bit of the Magna Carta, right. That no one is above God or the law. [00:10:00] Not even the rulers. Not even kings.  Give me just one more grievance.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:04] Oh, you got it. Here's one. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself as a teacher of theology, medicine or the law. She is not known. Women couldn't become doctors or lawyers, so they weren't permitted to attend medical school or law school. The first woman lawyer Arabella Mansfield was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:31] All right. So there is one grievance. I do think that we need to address the third one, an accusation that I know that Laura and other scholars have explored in their work. And this one says he has withheld her from rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.

Laura Free: [00:10:53] Yeah, yeah. You know, that's the that's the one that's a signal to [00:11:00] me that that the women's rights movement is not going to take up the cause of equality for all people. It's going to argue and and Stanton herself is the flag bearer for this aspect of the movement. But it's going to argue essentially that white women should have the same rights as white men, not necessarily that all people should have should all be equal. Stanton is particularly unhappy at this point, and she becomes increasingly so over the next 20 years that there are men that she believes to be her own personal inferior, who have more power and more rights in American society than she does. And that's that's her signal there about who who she feels that she's better than. And by the 1866 becomes fully blown racist language and arguments. And she's letting her [00:12:00] baggage show here in a way. Right, that that she use she considers herself better than other people. And she's going to put that right front and center of the women's rights movement.

Laura Free: [00:12:16] And nobody really calls her on that bit. You know, they accept they vote on all of the provisions of the declaration and no one says, hey, at least we don't have a record of anyone saying in the meeting, hey, you know, maybe that's not the nicest thing you could be saying here when we're in a movement at a meeting for people who are, you know, looking for equality, let's not also retrench race and class, you know, inequalities in our movement.Yeah. We don't we don't see that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:47] This is something that we cannot separate from the movement. And Stanton, specifically. That these women divorce women's suffrage from other issues of equality. It's the ugly truth that the best known suffragists [00:13:00] actively opposed the 15th Amendment, which gave black American men the right to vote.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:07] Yeah, this document mimics the Declaration of Independence in its words and in its format. But there's one contrast that I wanted to ask Laura about. It's the action, the conclusion, the action in 1776 was. And therefore, because of this, we're done with You England. We're done with the he and all of those grievances.This isn't the case with the Declaration of Sentiments. 68 women signed it, but so did 32 men.

Laura Free: [00:13:34] Most of their the people are these are married people. These are people who live in close relationship with each other.There are men present at the convention. They don't want to get rid of men in the same way that Americans wanted to get rid of the king. They just want men to behave better. They want they want the laws to be framed more equally. They want they want a seat at the table, [00:14:00] essentially. And so in some ways, they're not they're not saying goodbye. They're asking to say hello.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:06] As we've revisited the Declaration of Independence and all of these episodes, one theme that struck me again and again was that the declaration has unending reverberations. It's got bad echoes in the case of the anti Native American language that made its way into Supreme Court decisions and good ones. It's used to incite change, to advocate for equality.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:31] Yeah, I asked Laura what the declaration of sentiments can teach us.

Laura Free: [00:14:37] I think what I would point to isn't anything inherent in the declaration or in the movement or in the women's rights movement itself. But is just the persistence, right? This is 1848 when the Declaration of Sentiments is is raised. It's not until 1920 that the 19th Amendment is passed that denies states the right [00:15:00] to discriminate on the basis of sex. But it's not even until the present moment that all women have the right to vote in a secure way. So it takes a really long time to make change in America. And it's so exciting right now to be living through this moment of of profound, hopefully, transformation. But I think it's it's going to be a marathon, not a sprint. And perhaps the women who met in 1848 knew that. Perhaps they did not. I don't know if they understood how long it was going to be before women's equality would be granted, that it's still not even right at this moment. But nevertheless, they persisted. And I think that's the message that I try to carry, is just to keep persisting.

[00:15:54] Rah, rah, rah.

[00:16:02] Well, [00:16:00] that is a wrap, folks, on the Declaration of Sentiments, as well as our whole series on revisiting the declaration, a new civics episode will be out soon. Today's episode is produced by Mina Kennedy Jr. with You Hannah McCarthy and help from Jackie Foltyn.

[00:16:15] Erica Janick is our executive producer.

[00:16:17] And where's the declaration of sentiments around her neck, even when it's not Halloween music in this episode by Made in the Grand Affair Azura and that new twist on an old classic, Chris Zabriskie.

[00:16:27] Every two weeks, Nick and I pore through the lesser known ephemera related to our episodes. The interesting trivia that gets cut from them. And we write about it in Extra Credit, our biweekly newsletter. It's free, it's fun, and we just want you to read it. If you're interested. Check it out at our website, Civics 101.

[00:16:44] Podcast Dog is Begal Button Thankachan right there, Civics 101, supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Birthright Citizenship: US v Wong Kim Ark

Most of us know about birthright citizenship, but not many people have ever heard of Wong Kim Ark and the landmark Supreme Court decision that decided both his fate and the fate of a U.S. immigration policy that endures to this day.

This episode was written and produced by Felix Poon.

Transcript:

Archival: Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Felix Poon: Hi, Nick. Hi, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: Hey, Felix.

Nick Capodice: Hello, Felix. Listeners, if you don't know who this is, this is Felix Poon. Felix has been an intern with Civics for the last summer and has been a delight to work with. We're very glad you're here today.

Hannah McCarthy: Felix Yeah. And Felix, you are going to guest host today, right?

Felix Poon: I am, because I've got a story for you, and this story starts in 1895. A man named Wong Kim Ark is on a steamship returning to his hometown of San Francisco, [00:00:30] the city where he was born. And when he lands, a customs agent says he can't enter the United States. He says, you're Chinese and there's a Chinese exclusion law, so you can't come in.

Hannah McCarthy: But you said it was his hometown of San Francisco, Right. So are you saying that someone born on U.S. soil was not allowed back into the country?

Felix Poon: That's right. That's what I'm saying. And he wasn't the only one. This was actually pretty common at that time. Customs agents tried to keep as many Chinese Americans out as they [00:01:00] could, but some Chinese Americans sued the U.S. government to be granted entry. Wong came out, sued, and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And it's his case that solidifies birthright citizenship. Nowadays, pretty much everybody knows about birthright citizenship, which is anybody born in this country as a U.S. citizen. And that's the law. But not many people have ever heard of Wong Kim Ark and the landmark Supreme Court decision that decided his fate and [00:01:30] the fate of U.S. immigration policy that endures to this day. And that, my friends, is the story I'm going to tell you about today. I'm Felix Poon and this is Civics 101, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. Today, the story of Wong Kim Ark, the man, the landmark Supreme Court case and the legacy of birthright citizenship. Before I tell you about Wong Kim Ark, I need to tell you about the America [00:02:00] that you was born into. Chinese immigrants began arriving in significant numbers in the 1850s. Many came for the gold rush in California. And when the gold rush ended, they found jobs as railroad workers, miners, farmhands, laundry owners and domestics. But hostility towards them had been growing.

Carol Nackenoff: In San Francisco. You have a labor organizer, Denis Kearney, who was agitating that the Chinese were taking white jobs [00:02:30] and and running a Chinese must go campaign.

Felix Poon: This is Carroll Nackenoff, professor of political science at Swarthmore College and coauthor of the forthcoming book American By Birth Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship.

Carol Nackenoff: In July of 1877, a mob formed and destroyed $100,000 in Chinese owned property, burning laundries and leaving four dead.

Felix Poon: That's millions of dollars of damage in today's money. That's a lot. But [00:03:00] more importantly, that's lost life and a lost sense of safety and belonging. And this racially motivated violence happened not just in San Francisco, but all along the West Coast, including Seattle, Tacoma and Los Angeles, where more than half the victims were publicly lynched.

Hannah McCarthy: That's horrifying. And I feel like this is a moment in American history that we really don't hear about. At least I didn't learn about in school. Did you, Nick?

Nick Capodice: No, not at all.

Felix Poon: Yeah, I didn't even learn about it until college, and I was kind of shocked to hear about [00:03:30] it, especially like I'd never learned about it before. And this is when Congress began excluding Chinese immigrants. They passed the country's first immigration act, the Page Act, in 1875, barring Chinese women from entering the country. And then in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred all Chinese people from entering the country. So that's the hostile environment that Wong Kim Ark was born into around 1871 [00:04:00] in San Francisco. He grew up in Chinatown. He was five foot seven tall. His father was Wong Zi Ping, and his mother was Lei Mei. His parents came to the US from Toisan, China, so public record listed them as merchants. But like, what does that actually mean?

Carol Nackenoff: They ran a store that's considered a merchant, which was in the city directory listed in 1879 and 1880 as a butcher and provision for.

Felix Poon: Wong Kim Ark didn't have much formal education. [00:04:30]

Carol Nackenoff: From age 11. He was listed as a cook.

Felix Poon: And that's about all we know about his life in the US. There are records of four trips he took to China. The first was in 1889 with his parents. He gets married on this trip to a woman named Yishai from his ancestral town of toI san. His second trip is in 1894 to 1895 to visit his wife and family, and it's coming back to San Francisco on the second trip that the customs agent says he can't enter the United [00:05:00] States.

Bethany Berger: And so he was detained. And he said, hey, I was born here. I'm a citizen. You have to let me in.

Felix Poon: This is Bethany Berger, professor of law at the University of Connecticut.

Bethany Berger: Not only did he say that he had.. He had papers with him to prove that. And the customs officer says, I don't care. Chinese cannot become citizens by being born in the United States.

Felix Poon: One of those papers is a notarized letter. We, the undersigned, do hereby certify [00:05:30] that the said Wong Kim Ark is well known to us a witness statement.

Carol Nackenoff: Anybody else traveling, a white American traveling abroad didn't have to have anything in the way of documents.

Felix Poon: This is Carol Nackenoff again.

Carol Nackenoff: And so the Chinese had a far more rigorous documentation regime than anybody else. They had to have witnesses that attested to where they lived and that they knew them.

Felix Poon: These witnesses [00:06:00] couldn't be Chinese. They had to be white.

Nick Capodice: Wait, was that written in? Was that was that a stipulation of it? Like they had to be white?

Felix Poon: I don't think they said it was like a written requirement. Like you must make sure you get a white person. It was just kind of like an unspoken rule that they wouldn't trust Chinese people. And so it was just kind of like they can't be Chinese in practice. It was find a white person, right?

Carol Nackenoff: And they would go through an interview, get this certificate that allowed them to return, go and return. [00:06:30] And it was a single use document.

Felix Poon: Even with this documentation in hand, the customs agent denies Wong K mark entry and so basically he has nowhere to go. So he gets back on the boat.

Hannah McCarthy: Seriously, did he have to go back to China?

Felix Poon: We'll get to that part. But first I have to tell you about those who came before him and what happened to them. There are a lot of Chinese men traveling back and forth to visit family in China at this time, and many are getting denied reentry to the United States. Some of them just give up [00:07:00] and make the trip back to China, a trip that takes 33 days, according to an old newspaper clipping. But others fought their detentions in court with the help of the six companies.

Nick Capodice: The six companies. What's that?

Felix Poon: Well, companies is probably a misnomer. There were really six prominent Chinese associations in San Francisco, and they came together as one to provide social support, but also to provide legal support to Chinese Americans. Here's Bethany Berger.

Bethany Berger: Again. In the first. Years of [00:07:30] the exclusion laws.They brought 7000 cases challenging Chinese exclusion. And they were so successful in doing this that Congress and the customs officials kept trying to amend the laws to make it harder for them to win these cases.

Hannah McCarthy: That's actually very cool.

Felix Poon: So the six companies are there for Wong Kim Ark. They file for habeas [00:08:00] corpus.

Nick Capodice: Habeas corpus, that little Latin phrase. That means bring the unlawfully detained person before the court.

Felix Poon: Yep, that's it. It's a right to a trial. Meanwhile, Wong Clark is still off the coast of San Francisco on a ship. And that ship is about to sail back to China.

Bethany Berger: So he's put onto another ship, and then that ship wants to go back and he's put on to another ship. And so this is a period. Of months. In which he's confined, looking over. At. [00:08:30]His hometown, but unable to set foot there.

Nick Capodice: So is he granted habeas?

Felix Poon: They do grant him habeas. But what's interesting here is that the judge actually agrees in principle with the U.S. government that Wonky Mark is not a citizen. But he says he has to go by legal precedent that was set by earlier court cases. And so he rules that Wong Clark is a U.S. citizen because of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

Hannah McCarthy: So this judge makes explicitly [00:09:00] clear that he has a racist idea here and that he is only making this decision based on precedents. He basically says this is against my better judgment, but I'm going to do this anyway. And so just as a reminder, that citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment says all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. So [00:09:30] Felix Wong, Kim Ark won?

Felix Poon: Yeah, he won. I mean, he was still unlawfully detained on three different boats for five months, but at least he won his court case.

Nick Capodice: So is that it, Felix Like, is this happily ever after for Wong Kim Ark?

Felix Poon: No, not quite.

Julie Novkov: The government immediately appeals, so they take it all the way up to [00:10:00] the US Supreme Court.

Felix Poon: This is Julie Novikov. She's a professor of political science at the University at Albany and coauthor with Carroll on their book, American by Birth. Wong Kim Ark in the Battle for Citizenship.

Julie Novkov: The majority opinion is written by Justice Horace Gray, and his response is that if people are in the United States and they're following the laws of the United States and basically they're not in some sort of special category like that of a diplomat, they [00:10:30] are living under the sovereignty of the United States and therefore, children who are born to them in the United States are born under that sovereign power. And therefore, according to common law principles, going back to England, they are entitled to citizenship on the basis of the 14th Amendment.

Felix Poon: In writing the majority opinion, Justice [00:11:00] Gray did reaffirm that there are exceptions to the citizenship clause. Diplomats are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. If they commit a crime, they don't face the justice system the same way that we do. So there are children that are born here, not US citizens, children born here of a foreign occupying force. It hasn't happened yet, knock on wood. But if it did happen. Not US citizens. So what the majority opinion boils down to is that Wong Kim Ark does not fall into any of these exempt [00:11:30] categories. So he is indeed a US citizen.

Nick Capodice: But hold on. If this case was decided the other way, wouldn't you then have to revoke the citizenship of millions of children born to European immigrants?

Felix Poon: I mean, basically and Justice Gray wrote this in his opinion that to deny Kim Ark his citizenship would be to, quote, deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered [00:12:00] and treated as citizens of the United States. This ruling is a big deal. It solidifies a path to citizenship for all immigrants that is based on the 14th Amendment. But then there were some unintended consequences in the aftermath of the ruling.

Nick Capodice: Like what?

Felix Poon: So there's this phenomenon of paper sons.

Nick Capodice: Paper sons actually know about these, do you Hannah?

Hannah McCarthy: I don't. I would imagine it's someone claiming someone as their their son [00:12:30] or your daughter, but it would be son in this case.

Nick Capodice: So since the only way you could be a legal Chinese immigrant to the United States was if you were a family member of somebody who had been born here, a child of somebody who had been born here. So you have all these people claiming. Right. So all new Chinese immigrants to the U.S. are claiming that they are the children of people already here on paper, therefore paper sons.

Julie Novkov: Some of these paper sons were maybe not necessarily the sons of citizens, but they were close relatives, maybe they were brothers, [00:13:00] maybe they were nephews. But because there's an awareness among immigration officials that that this is happening, they become far, far more suspicious. What evolves out of this is that you you wind up with kind of a cat and mouse game between Chinese who are trying to get into the United States and immigration officials who are trying to keep as many out as possible.

Felix Poon: And exclusion laws only [00:13:30] get worse.

Julie Novkov: By the time we get to 1924. Legislation is basically excluding almost all Asian immigration and denying immigrants from Asia any possibility of gaining citizenship. This actually goes as far in the 1920s as denying citizenship to Japanese who had served in World War One. [00:14:00]

Archival: My fellow countrymen. We have called the Congress here this afternoon not only to mark a very historic occasion, but to settle a very old issue that is in dispute.

Felix Poon: It's not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that immigration bans and quotas are completely lifted.

Archival: With my signature. This system is abolished. [00:14:30]

Felix Poon: And finally, you have greater numbers of Asians immigrating to the US.

Archival: Never again shatter the gate to the American nation.

Felix Poon: Soon after that, public scrutiny over immigration shifts and beginning around the 1980s, you have some people using the term birthright citizenship pejoratively against the children of undocumented [00:15:00] Mexican Americans. They call for doing away with birthright citizenship and immigration.

Archival: President Trump is setting to challenge a 150 year old constitutional standard that anyone born in America is an American citizen.

Hannah McCarthy: The President. But the president can't just unilaterally do away with something that was decided in the Supreme Court, right? I mean, the Wonka marque ruling means that they can't just get rid of birthright citizenship.

Felix Poon: Well, some would argue that the Wong Kim Ark ruling doesn't [00:15:30] apply here because Wonka Marks parents were here legally while undocumented immigrants are here illegally.

Nick Capodice: So what did the people you talked to think about that?

Felix Poon: They don't think this argument would be very convincing in court. Basically, they say that there was no distinction back then between documented and undocumented. If you made it to U.S. shores, you were a citizen. But given the exclusion laws, it was clear the government wanted to exclude Chinese people from this country. [00:16:00] So they're in consensus that the Wong Kim Mark ruling does apply, and therefore the only way to do away with birthright citizenship is to amend the Constitution, which, by the way, is not an easy process. It would need to pass through both the House and the Senate with two thirds majorities, and then it needs to be approved by three fourths of state legislatures. So birthright citizenship is probably here to stay. And our guests all agreed that's a good thing. Here's Julie Novikov.

Julie Novkov: Well, I think birthright citizenship is [00:16:30] important simply because it provides an additional layer of protection for some of the most vulnerable residents of our country. And it also, I think, telegraphs a message of equality of of being born in America. And regardless of where you're coming from or what your situation is, there's a kind of moral [00:17:00] valence to birthright citizenship that is entangled in a productive and good way with American ideals.

Hannah McCarthy: Felix I'm so curious what happened in the end to Wong Kim Ark.

Felix Poon: Well, we don't really know much beyond his third and fourth trips to China to visit his family. Remember, his wife was back in China in that fourth trip in 1931. Was Wong [00:17:30] Mark's last. He didn't come back to the US and we know that he died sometime in the 1940s.

Nick Capodice: So do you know if, like, he died without ever knowing what his legacy was?

Felix Poon: That's a really good question, Nick, and I think the best person to answer that is Erica Lee. She's a professor of American history at the University of Minnesota. She said the reason why he wouldn't have known is because of his lived experience. Remember those notarized witness statements Wong Kim Ark had to get Erika went to see the originals [00:18:00] at the National Archives at San Francisco, and she saw that by his third and fourth trips to China, the U.S. government standardized them into a templated form.

Erica Lee: It was called application of alleged American citizen of the Chinese race for pre investigation of status. This is a government form that means that someone typeset it, someone put it through the printer, someone ordered thousands of copies to be printed and then sent to immigration offices around the country having [00:18:30] that. That term alleged citizen shows just how deeply rooted and institutionalized this racism was. So. So no matter if you won the Supreme Court case. On a daily basis, you're still going to be suspect. I also remember flipping through the file and wondering, where's the copy of the Supreme Court case? Like, shouldn't this be like in Monopoly? Should this be or get out of jail free [00:19:00] card? Like, shouldn't he have just, like, gotten walked off the ship? Hey, it's one mark, you know. Come on in. That didn't happen.

Hannah McCarthy: Felix This is something that we encounter a lot when it comes to people who win their Supreme Court cases in the names of civil rights, and that's that. It just takes so long for whatever it is they've won to be implemented across the United States, right? That that that person ostensibly the beneficiary isn't practically [00:19:30] the beneficiary. They don't get to reap the reward of that decision. And it sounds like that's how it went down for Wong Kim Ark, right?

Felix Poon: Oh, definitely. But there is one last thing to this story. What this landmark ruling does do for Wong Kim Ark is that it allows his sons to immigrate to the US and become naturalized citizens. So guess what? Wong Kim Ark has descendants here in the US, and I just think that's amazing because the US government tried so hard to prevent [00:20:00] Chinese immigrants from establishing families here, but here they are, the family of Wong Kim Ark.

Hannah McCarthy: Mark Felix Does this end up being this proud family story that gets passed down?

Felix Poon: Actually, no. Erica says nobody in the family really knew about it until 1998. There was a 100 year anniversary celebration in San Francisco, and Wong Kim Ark's youngest son just happened to see it reported in the Chinese language newspaper.

Erica Lee: And this is where for the first time, those of us who had [00:20:30] researched Wong Kim Mark realized that his son was still living in San Francisco and that when the reporter interviewed him, he expressed a great deal of surprise that he had never heard his father talk about his struggle. He had no recollection that this [00:21:00] Supreme Court case and the right of birthright citizenship was based on his father's efforts. And it was just such a, I think, tragedy of how we choose which stories, which struggles get remembered and which ones we allow to get forgotten. It was a double tragedy, you know, not just for the Wong family, [00:21:30] but for all of us who care about our our country. One would think that when you win a Supreme Court case and that it establishes such a broad base of citizenship rights, the right of birthright citizenship, that your name would be well known, celebrated, that there would be streets named after you, that there [00:22:00] would be a a statue, that there would be a way that every schoolchild would know who this person was and the importance of his struggle for equality.

Nick Capodice: I just want to say I think it's interesting that the three of us are talking about learning or not learning about [00:22:30] this in school because we've been talking a lot about exclusion and the idea of like the Chinese Exclusion Act. But exclusion doesn't end in 1965. There's still this exclusion of what stories we tell and don't tell.

Hannah McCarthy: I feel like after today, I have a much clearer sense of this time in American history. So thanks for sharing Felix.

Felix Poon: Yeah, thank you for having me host Today it's been an honor to be able to tell you this story. Today's [00:23:00] episode was produced by me Felix Poon, along with Hannah McCarthy, Nick Capodice and Jacqui Fulton. Erika Janik is our executive producer. Special thanks to Bill Hing and Taylor Quimby. Music In this episode from Blue Dot Sessions, Sara, the instrumentalist, Loba Loco and the Tower of Light. You can listen to more Civics 101 at Civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. [00:23:30] It's a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Declaration Revisited: Native Americans

Today is our second revisit to the document that made us a nation. Writer, activist, and Independent presidential candidate Mark Charles lays out the anti-Native American sentiments within it, the doctrines and proclamations from before 1776 that justified ‘discovery,’ and the Supreme Court decisions that continue to cite them all.

In this episode students will learn about: Land acknowledgments, Navajo introduction traditions, the Doctrine of Discovery, Proclamation of 1763, Native Americans in the Declaration, Johnson v M’intosh, and City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.

Education Resources

Graphic Organizer and Discussion Questions

Civics 101 Lesson Plan: Creating a Land Acknowledgment

Episode Segments

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Transcript

Civics 101

Episode: Declaration Revisited: Native Americans

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:05] When we did our declaration episode last year Hannah, author and Harvard professor Danielle Allen told us the document was a masterclass in political philosophy unto itself, that you can hear pro slavery and antislavery voices in it. And then there was something that we didn't talk about in the episode. In a recent interview on Vox, she said, One of the big things we get wrong when we talk about the declaration is that we think it was written entirely by Thomas Jefferson.

Danielle Allen: [00:00:35] He put on his tombstone author, Declaration of Independence. That was a real self aggrandizing gesture. In fact, he was the scribe. The intellectual work of the declaration was driven significantly by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. That's an important thing to say out loud, because Adams is somebody who never owned slaves and Franklin was somebody who was an enslaver earlier in his life. And who repudiated enslavement [00:01:00] and in fact became a proactive vocal advocate of abolition.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:05] And when we spoke with Danielle, she noted this, that there are pro slavery and antislavery voices in the declaration. But then she followed up that there is one community that shared no such duality.

Danielle Allen: [00:01:17] I mean, you can't say the same thing about the treatment of Native Americans. You can't see a moment of sort of positivity in the declaration on that front. And this is really, for me, the worst moment in the declaration, the one piece of the declaration that still I think really hurts.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:32] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:32] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:34] And this is Civics 101, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. Today is our second revisit to our founding document. We wanted to focus on that particular grievance and its social and political reverberations. I spoke with author, activist and independent candidate for president Mark Charles, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Mark Charles: [00:01:57] Yá’ át’ ééh. Mark Charles yinishyé. Tsin bikee dine’é nishłí. Dóó tó’aheedlíinii bá shíshchíín. Tsin bikee’ dine’é dashicheii. Dóó tódích’ íi’ nii dashinálí. [00:02:00]

Mark Charles: [00:01:57] In our Navajo culture, when we introduce ourselves, we always give our four clans. We're matrilineal as a people and our identities come from our mother's mother. So my mother's mother's American of Dutch heritage. And that's why I say Tsin bikee dine’é that loosely translated, hat means I'm from the wooden shoe people. My second clan, my father's mother is tó’aheedlíinii gleni, which is the waters that flow together. My third clan, my mother's father is also Tsin bikee dine’é, my fourth clan, my father's father is tódích’ íi’ nii, that's the bitter water clan. It's one of the original clans of our Navajo people.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:42] That's really interesting because, you know, whenever we introduce ourselves, like even at the beginning of each podcast, we say our first name and our last name and leave it at that. But that Navajo introduction roots oneself in the lands and the people that are a part of you. [00:03:00] It's an active form of self identifying.

Mark Charles: [00:03:03] I also just want to acknowledge that I am speaking to you today from Washington, D.C. and Washington, D.C. is the traditional end of the Piscataway, the Piscataway are the native nation. They lived here. They hunted here. They farmed here. They fished here. They raised their families here. They buried their dead here. Their society was here. And this was the nation that was removed from these lands. And when these lands were colonized. So they were here long before Columbus got lost at sea and then they were removed from these lands. So the District of Columbia, the state of Maryland, the state of Virginia could be established. I like to acknowledge the people whose land I'm on, no matter where I go around the country. So everywhere I speak, when I travel, I always acknowledge the host people of the land. And I want to acknowledge today the Piscataway and I want to thank them publicly for their stewardship of these lands. And I want to thank them for the honor of living of being on their lands today.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:57] I called Mark to talk about the declaration, but [00:04:00] he said first we had to go back to another set of documents from about 300 years earlier, which created a concept of international law called the Doctrine of Discovery.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:10] To be honest, I actually haven't heard of that. And I'm a little abashed because we did an entire series on the founding documents. What is the doctrine of discovery?

Mark Charles: [00:04:21] The Doctrine of Discovery is a series of papal bulls that are edicts of the Catholic Church written between fourteen fifty two and fourteen ninety three. They say things like invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracen's and pagans whatsoever, reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, convert them to his and to their use and profit.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:43] That quote is from the papal bull Dum Diversas in 1452. A papal bull, by the way, is a public decree or a charter that's issued by the pope. And Dum Diversas was issued in 1452 by Pope Nicholas the Fifth.

Mark Charles: [00:04:58] So the doctrine discovery, it's essentially [00:05:00] the church in Europe saying to the nations of Europe, wherever you go, whatever lands you find that are not ruled by white European Christian rulers, those people are subhuman and their land is yours for the taking. So this is literally the doctrine that let European nations go into Africa, colonize the continent, enslave the people because they didn't believe them to be human. It's the same doctrine that allowed Columbus, who was lost at sea, to land in this new world, which was already inhabited by millions, and claimed to have discovered it.

Mark Charles: [00:05:34] If you think about it, you cannot discover land already inhabited. That's called stealing. It's called conquering, it's called colonizing. The fact that our history books, our monuments are our proclamations refer to Columbus as the discoverer of America, this reveals the implicit racial bias of the nation, which is that Native people specifically and people of color in general are not fully human.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:59] And I would guess, right, [00:06:00] that the dehumanization of nonwhites results in a drastic expansion of the church's power across the whole world. So how is this idea of enslavement and the taking of land tied to the Declaration of Independence?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:18] Mark wanted to mention one more step before 1776. It's a proclamation of King George III, given to the 13 colonies in 1763.

Mark Charles: [00:06:28] In this proclamation, one of the things he did was he essentially drew a line down the Appalachian Mountains and he said to the colonies that were here that they no longer have the right of discovery of the empty Indian lands west of Appalachia. That right, he said, belonged to the crown, not to the colonists. Now, this is where there was a break between the northern colonies up where Canada is and the southern colonies, which were the thirteen of the US, where the northern colonies accepted the proclamation of 1763. It didn't change the history. The [00:07:00] lands were still "discovered." They were just discovered by the Crown, not the colonies.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:05] 1763 is also the year of the end of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War. And that's when what became Canada changed from French hands to British control. And this proclamation actually started to set up guidance on how to protect indigenous rights to the land. It's a huge factor in Canadian land rights, even to this day. But the southern colonies and when I say southern, I mean all of the 13 colonies that eventually became the United States, they rejected this. They wanted that land for themselves. They wanted that right of discovery. And so they made an official complaint.

Mark Charles: [00:07:42] So a few years later, they write a letter of protest. In their letter of protest, they have a list of grievances against the king. One of the grievances is that he's raising the level of conditions for new appropriations of land. The other grievance this is one of their last grievances is that he's endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants [00:08:00] of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose only known rule of warfare is a complete destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. It's literally...this is the Declaration Independence.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:10] I have thought of the declaration as an announcement of separation, a justification for revolution, but I'd never considered it as a letter of protest.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:21] The grievances, frankly, get short shrift when we examine the document, but they are all tied to very specific frustrations with England, with the king, and those two paired together embed this racist doctrine of discovery into our very founding.

Mark Charles: [00:08:37] So 30 lines below the statement, all men are created equal, the Declaration of Independence refers to natives as savages, making it very clear that the founding fathers used this inclusive term all men, merely because they had a very narrow definition of who is actually human. So this makes the Declaration [00:09:00] of Independence a blatant systemically white supremacist document.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:09] And it's not just the ethical problem of considering a whole people as savages, the doctrine of discovery becomes embedded into American law. In 1823, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Johnson vs. McIntosh.

Mark Charles: [00:09:24] And it's two men of European descent and they're litigating over a single piece of land. One of them got the land, acquired the land from a tribe. The other one acquired the same land from the government. They want to know who owned it. So the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court, this is John Marshall's court. He was the chief justice at the time. They had to decide the principle that land titles were based on. They ruled that the principle was that Discovery gave title to the land and then they referenced the Doctrine of Discovery and John Marshall actually [00:10:00] wrote, he said, But the Indians who inhabited these lands were fierce savages whose subsistence came chiefly from the forests. To leave them in possession of their own country was to leave the country a wilderness. This is in the in the opinion he wrote in Johnson vs. Mcintosh. So literally the conclusion of this opinion is that title is based on Discovery, and Natives, even though we were here first, but because we're savages, we are merely occupants of the land, like a fish, occupies water, like a bird occupies air. Meanwhile, Europeans, who have the right of discovery to the land, the fee title to it, they're the true title holders. So that case back in 1823 creates the legal precedent for land titles based on this understanding that natives are savages.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:56] How long did that Supreme Court precedent remain that [00:11:00] land titles are based on "discovery?"

Nick Capodice: [00:11:03] That decision, Marshall's decision was cited in 1954, 1985 and most recently 2005.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:13] Are you kidding? What was the 2005 case?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:15] It was the city of Sherrill vs. the Oneida Indian Nation of New York. To take it back, at the time of our founding, the Oneida Indian Nation owned about six million acres of land, which the George Washington administration reduced to a few hundred thousand and set aside as a reservation. The Oneida sold much of that land to New York State over the next 200 years.

Mark Charles: [00:11:36] So in the nineteen nineties, the United Indian nation came back to the state of New York and they purchased some of their traditional lands on the open market. They paid full price for them. And they wanted to reestablish some of their traditional sovereignty over these lands. Now, the lands they bought were within the city limits of the city of Sherrill, and if they had sovereignty [00:12:00] over them, it meant they wouldn't pay taxes on them. The city of Sherrill wanted their tax revenues. So they sued the Oneida Indian Nation in federal district court. The case went to the Supreme Court in 2003 and in 2005 the opinion was written. In the first footnote of the case, the court references the doctrine of discovery by name. They then go on to establish that because these lands were settled by, were settled by white people, that there was no precedent for giving the land back. They then go on and they build the argument that these lands have since been converted from wilderness to become parts of city like Sherrill.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:44] They used that exact word wilderness.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:46] They did. They are reiterating the exact words of Justice Marshall.

Mark Charles: [00:12:50] So the court in 2005 is making the exact same argument. It's just not using the word savages, but it's making the same argument. And so then they conclude [00:13:00] that the Oneida Indian Nation cannot rekindle embers of sovereignty that have long ago grown cold. It's one of the most white supremacist Supreme Court opinions in my lifetime. And that opinion was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: [00:13:15] But given the extraordinary passage of time, the Oneida's long delay in seeking equitable relief in court against New York or its local units and developments in the city of Sherrill spanning several generations. We reject the piecemeal shift in government.

Mark Charles: [00:13:34] And you ask yourself, how can this happen while our nation is literally having a debate about systemic institutionalized white supremacy and we're calling out these racist symbols and we're making some even big changes, and yet we still celebrate this document that literally calls native savages. [00:14:00]

Nick Capodice: [00:14:05] Mark told me the reason he wants to have a national conversation about this is that when we talk about institutional racism and white supremacy, we don't just deal with the low hanging fruit.

Mark Charles: [00:14:16] Yeah, the low hanging fruit is Andrew Jackson. Most Americans can agree he was a problem. We have to deal with him. The low hanging fruit is the Confederate flag. And generally, you know, most people can agree they didn't represent the best of America. The low hanging fruit is Christopher Columbus. Yes. He was pretty vile person who who way overstepped his bounds of what he should have done. That's the low hanging fruit. And yeah, we can all agree those are not good pieces of our history and our legacy to deal with. But because we're dealing with systemic racism and institutionalized white supremacy, we also have to realize that's going to affect the core of who we are.

Mark Charles: [00:14:55] So we have to also look at what's at the center. Abraham [00:15:00] Lincoln, who was a blatant white supremacist and literally committed genocide against native peoples in the states of Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico, including my own people, the Navajo in the long walk.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:15] We have to look at the Declaration of Independence, it's the value statements for our nation. And what I'm saying is until we have a foundation that actually allows for the humanity of everybody, our laws are never going to reflect that. If you have a house that's built on a bad foundation, you're going to have cracks in your walls, you're going to have gaps in your windowsills, you're going to have a creaky, crooked floor. Now you can paint your walls all you want. You can caulk your windows as much as you want. You can you carpet your your floor every every summer. But until you fix the foundation, you're never going to fix the house. [00:16:00]

Mark Charles: [00:16:01] And so this is where a new law isn't going to solve these problems. We have to deal with the foundation. And so I propose that let's remove the racism, the sexism in the white supremacy from our foundations.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:25] That's two out of three declaration responses, the third will be in a couple of weeks. Today's episode is produced by me, Nick Capodice, with you Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:32] Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton and Felix Poon.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:35] Erica Janik is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Yung Karts sub Harmonic Bliss. Emily Sprague. And to hear him is to love him. Chris Zabriskie.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:46] Also, if there are any teachers out there who want to join our cabinet to get paid to work with us to create lesson plans and activities, to pair with our show, get all of the details at Civics 101 podcast.org backslash [00:17:00] Info.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:02] Finally, Hannah and I are going to host an On Air Ask Civics segment weekly on New Hampshire Public Radio. So if you have any questions you like answered in the lead up to this massive election, send them our way. Email us at Civics101@nhpr.org.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:15] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Declaration Revisited: Black Americans

Today is the first of three revisits to the Declaration of Independence; three communities to which the tenets of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not apply.

Byron Williams, author of The Radical Declaration, walks us through how enslaved Americans and Black Americans pushed against the document from the very beginning of our nation’s founding.

In this episode students will learn about: Prince Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin.

Episode Resources

Graphic organizer and discussion questions

Freedom and the Nation's Founding Documents from Teaching Tolerance (references Whipple petition)

Episode Segments

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Nick Capodice: [00:00:04] About a year ago, Hannah, we made an episode about the Declaration of Independence. And it had a healthy dose of my enthusiasm for 1776.

[00:00:13] The declaration will be a triumph. I tell you, a triumph!

Nick Capodice: [00:00:17] And it had different takes from three scholars on what the document was.

[00:00:22] It had the job of justifying one of the most consequential political decisions ever taken.

[00:00:27] And I refer to the Declaration Independence as originally written as a secession ordinance.

[00:00:32] This was as close to a perfect document on human agency that one will ever find,

Nick Capodice: [00:00:40] And I loved making that episode. I really did.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:44] And since then, the declaration has found its way into many of our episodes.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:49] Yes, our exploration of that document feels forever unfinished. And on the cutting room floor of that episode was something our guest, Byron Williams, said. How the declaration was exclusionary, but the ideas in it evolved into the words of Abraham Lincoln. James Baldwin, the poet and activist Langston Hughes. As we passed this most recent quarantined Fourth of July, I called Byron up to just get a little more on this.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:18] Just want to check the time before we start to start, you got like 30 minutes.

Byron Williams: [00:01:21] I got thirty one for you.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:24] Byron Williams is a professor, theologian and host of the show The Public Morality, and he has just written The Radical Declaration. It's a book of essays on our paradoxical founding document. So I asked him first how the declaration had been used to fuel political change.

Byron Williams: [00:01:41] Well, Lincoln, reconstruction, women's suffrage, civil rights, Jim Crow, Vietnam. The current moment. We see that. That's the great thing about about that document. We can just pick a seminal moment and it pretty much works. So how do you want to go?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:58] I'm Nick Capodice. 

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:59] I'm Hannah McCarthy. 

Nick Capodice: [00:02:00] And this is Civics 101, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. Today is the first of three revisits to the Declaration of Independence, perhaps our most celebrated founding document. While it has been used, as Byron said, to instigate change throughout our country's history, it is, frankly, a document that's left many people and communities out.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:23] By which you mean enslaved Americans, women, people of color and Native Americans.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:30] And initially, even more than that,

Byron Williams: [00:02:33] It is never stated. But the unstated part of that declaration was it applied to white male landowners. In our present discourse, oftentimes we hear white male and we leave out landowners. But it was white male landowners. Sort of like think of it this way. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is this moral agreement. And you've got to have all three to have them all. Two thirds of that proposition won't cut it. If you were white and male and not a landowner, you were still disenfranchised. So as a result, you have this document that proposes creating a nation on liberty and equality. What becomes with the unstated white male land owners? You have subjective liberty and inequality. You disenfranchise all the women, all the people of color, and depending on the, on the data, somewhere between 35 and 50 percent of the white male population. So it's a document right there rooted in inconsistency in what I talk about in the book paradox.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:47] And that paradox in the declaration was commented on and tested not long after it was signed. Byron points to Prince Whipple of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Byron Williams: [00:03:57] He was this slave of William Whipple, who was a signer of the Declaration,  and they petitioned to the Hampshire Continental Congress in 1779, to be exact. And a part of it reads The petition of Nero Brewster and others natives of Africa now forcibly detained in slavery and said state most humbly submit that the God of nature gave them life and freedom upon terms of the most perfect equality with other men. That freedom is an inherent right of the human species not to be surrendered. Does that not sound like they were slightly influenced by we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator?

Byron Williams: [00:04:45] You see right there, the Declaration of Independence is already becoming radicalized, going already going beyond the intended white male landowner to, to more people really not included going, wait a minute. But you said these things. And we are petitioning our freedom based on what you have already committed yourselves to.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:09] This was a literal petition that went before the New Hampshire house.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:13] Yes. Before we even had a constitutional right to protest or petition. This was how the people in New Hampshire could interact with their government.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:21] What did the New Hampshire Congress do?

Nick Capodice: [00:05:23] They tabled it with no legislative action. Whipple himself was not freed for five more years. Movement towards abolition in New Hampshire began in 1783, but Portsmouth merchants participated in the slave trade until 1837. That was the year the African slave trade was abolished, not the practice of slavery itself.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:45] A small number of enslaved people were reported on the census in New Hampshire until 1840. And shortly after that, in 1852, one of the most famous and critical speeches about American independence was delivered. Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July. It's a speech he gave at a commemoration of the Declaration signing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:08] Did you see that recording done by NPR this past Fourth of July of his descendants reading sections from that?

[00:06:15] What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham. Your boasted liberty and unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity, your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless.

Byron Williams: [00:06:44] Frederick Douglass is obviously one of those stories you can't make up a runaway slave.He runs away, stows away, goes to England, becomes educated. I'm just giving you the really not even the Reader's Digest version and comes back and becomes one of the most ardent abolitionists to end slavery.

Byron Williams: [00:07:05] At this point. It was 1850, 1852. Frederick Douglass sees the irony, the inconsistency of the Declaration of Independence that it does not extend to everybody specifically. It does not extend, you know, to the people of African descent. But later on. Post Civil War. Douglas says this, "I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's destiny. So indeed, I regarded the principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions and in all places against all foes and at whatever cost. I think that's a great lesson for all of us if we freeze this document in time. You know, I you know, I'm an African-American, if I freeze it, if I freeze the document to the intentions of 1776, then the document may not be relevant to me given given given the history of America. But it's not about anyone's intent. It's what the country committed to. And so you see in Frederick Douglass at the first reading, he points out the hypocrisy, but then later on he evolves and goes, you know what? This document does work, but it can only work if we wanted to.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:36] When I learned about Frederick Douglass in school, it was always in the context of the civil war. But he continued to give lectures across the world well after. He helped to build housing for Black Americans in Baltimore in the late 1890s. And he died in 1895 after returning from a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, DC. So, yes, slavery was abolished in 1865, but responses to the declaration and the ideals laid out in it continued into the 20th century.

Byron Williams: [00:09:10] So then you have Langston Hughes saying, you know, America has never been America to me, it's a beautiful poem.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:18] Are you familiar with Langston Hughes?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:19] I know a little I know that he was a prominent author during the Harlem Renaissance and that he wrote a famous poem called Harlem.

[00:09:27] What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:38] Byron is referencing Hughes's later poem entitled Let America Be America Again.

Byron Williams: [00:09:45] But even in that lament that America has never been America to him and acknowledging the hypocrisy Hughes carves out a piece of hope. "But I do say clearly America will be America to me" in spite of itself, this thing will happen. And so there is the reality that the America of America's failed promise, but yet there's still this hope that America will be this thing one day.

Byron Williams: [00:10:14] And then you have one of the great 20th century writers, James Baldwin.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:20] James Baldwin was a prolific playwright and novelist and essayist who wrote extensively on the subject of race, but also spoke about it on late night talk shows.

Byron Williams: [00:10:31] There's this great interview that he does on Dick Cavett, and I'm paraphrasing, but Baldwin basically says, you know, I don't know if if real estate lobbyists hate black people, but I know where they forced me to live.

[00:10:46] I don't know what the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter. But I know I'm not in their unions. I don't know if the Board of Education hates Black people. I know the textbooks I give my children to read and the schools that we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my life and my woman, my sister and my children on some idealism, which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.

Byron Williams: [00:11:14] And so at some point, delayed gratification becomes no becomes nonexistent. And I don't believe it. And the only challenge to that is that if you follow the Baldwin path to its logical conclusion, you end up nihilistic and apathetic, which is an understandable conclusion. It does not make us a better people. You know, Bob Dylan wrote the lyric, When you got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. A Democratic Republic cannot survive if it has a growing population that feels they have nothing to lose. That they have nothing. So they have nothing to lose. And they're sort of checked out. The republic cannot survive if that number reaches a certain threshold. And I and I actually worry today Nick that we're getting closer to that threshold.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:06] What does Byron think will improve our Democratic Republic?

Nick Capodice: [00:12:11] Byron was very careful to not give prescriptions on how to improve our democratic republic. He specifically said he wrote this book on the declaration to start a conversation. I think I'm going to end this one on the words of someone else, on James Baldwin.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:31] Apathy and nihilism aside, in 1959 he wrote, "Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom from which we began," which is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And then he said "the recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country, a hard look at himself. And if we're not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations."

Nick Capodice: [00:13:14] I'm taking a page out of Byron's book in honor of him being the first outdoor Civics 101 interview, and I'm recording these credits outside on the hottest day of the year at 12 noon.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:26] Today's episode is produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton and Felix Poon. Erica Janik is our executive producer and figurative thunder blanket. Music in this episode by Jesse Gallagher, Blacksona, Sarah the Illstrumentalist and that musician who keeps his songs in a brisk key, Chris Zabriskie. And attention teachers! We're hiring! Civics 101 is hiring. We're looking for a few educators from across the country to design lesson plans and brainstorm new episodes and materials. For more information, remuneration, s super short application, go to civics101podcast.org/info. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Civic Action: Voting, Part 2

Voting in America is not always straightforward, nor is its impact always clear. In this episode, we give you the basic tools to vote on election day, including tips for avoiding the roadblocks. And for those of you on the fence about exercising that enfranchisement, a word to the wise: your vote matters. We’ll tell you why, with help from Kim Wehle and Andrea Hailey.

Episode Resources

Looking for a voting leg up? Check out the resources below! And don’t forget, your secretary of state’s office is a baseline go-to for info on registration, polling locations and other voting musts!

Vote.org (check out their Election Protection page)

U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Vote 411

Common Cause

Rock the Vote

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Transcript

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

Civic Action: Voting, Pt. 2

CPB: [00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:06] Before I started interviewing people for this voting thing, Nick, the question came up that often comes up at the show. We're talking about voting.

[00:00:15] Voting can be a political act, but is voting a political subject?

[00:00:23] And if we try to give people the tools to vote through this show, is that a political act?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:30] We've had this discussion in meetings dozens of times. And to me, it feels like it shouldn't be. But maybe that's just my gut.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:37] Yeah, it's my gut, too. We've talked about this a lot, but still, I had to ask.

Kim Wehle: [00:00:42] Well, I'm so glad you raised that point that asking or encouraging people to vote is somehow partisan. Because my last book last year was about the Constitution, how to read the Constitution and why. And sometimes talking about what's in the Constitution is perceived as partisan.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:57] This is Kim Wehle. After writing [00:01:00] How to read the Constitution and Why she wrote a book called What You Need to Know About Voting and Why. And he asked, she tells people how to vote and she doesn't think it's political.

Kim Wehle: [00:01:10] The reason that I say go ahead and vote is that we all are Americans. And ultimately, we are a government by the people. It's not a government by the Republicans or a government by the Democrats or government by independents. It's government by the people.

[00:01:26] Kim's thing is the framers set us up with this system that would allow us to self govern. No depending on some king's good graces, we would be self-determined here. Voting is the tool they gave us to ensure that.

Kim Wehle: [00:01:41] And if we don't exercise our right to vote, the alternative is that politicians have the power. So I think it. I don't think it's partisan, really, structurally and theoretically to to encourage people to be to self-govern, because that is the compact that we as Americans have by birth, essentially. [00:02:00] That is reflected in the Constitution. And I think it's really doing a disservice. And it is partisan to suggest that somehow voting is is not a good idea for any individual, because it's the only way that you can have your views heard, regardless of where you aren't a policy, whether you like believe in climate change, you don't. You support immigration reform. You don't. You want LGBTQ rights. You don't. The way you get that herd is at the ballot box. Otherwise, people in power make that decision for you.

Achival: [00:02:38] Now, here's a sign that says, hey, kids, tell everybody it's your duty to vote.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:48] Welcome to Civics 101. The podcast about the basics of how our democracy works. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:54] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:55] And this is part two of our voting episode. We're going to cover, quite simply [00:03:00] how to do it.

Achival: [00:03:01] You have to be registered in order to vote.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:03] The ballot box is the place where your political and moral beliefs get amplified. That's where your ideas can become a reality.

Achival: [00:03:10] So kids make sure that your moms and dads checked the registration days in your community.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:16] And before we dig in, it must be said.

[00:03:19] Voting is not easy for everyone. There are a lot of laws, practices and policies in this country that end up disenfranchising people.

[00:03:28] And if you want to know more about that, you can check out part one of this episode on voting. But if you just want to know how to do the dang thing, well, here we go.

Achival: [00:03:38] Remember, boys and girls, it's their duty and privilege to vote. Make sure that mom and dad do.

Kim Wehle: [00:03:44] Number one is to register. And now in the age of COVID, if you want to vote by mail, you have to usually apply to vote by mail in order to then vote by mail. So you have to make sure you're registered in the polls and then and request a mail in ballot.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:59] Now, I want [00:04:00] to point out that while all states have some form of mail in voting. About a third of them, at least the time this podcast dropped, summer 2020, require you to have some sort of excuse for needing that mail in ballot. Those excuses range from being out of the country on Election Day to being over a certain age, to having a religious reason for not being able to go to the polls.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:21] Also there are more and more cases of people challenging, needing to have an excuse, a reason, and even pushing for, you know, a worldwide pandemic to be a good excuse for needing a mail in ballot. All right. So registration is step one, step two.

Kim Wehle: [00:04:37] Step two is voting. Just because you've registered doesn't mean when you show up on that day that you are going to be able to vote. You have to make sure that your registrations up to date, if you've moved, you have to let your secretary of state know in your state that you've moved. If you've moved out of state, you have to re-register in the new state. Some states you can show up on voting day and register, and that's awesome. [00:05:00] But in most states, it's a two step process. And you have to do the registration early enough in time and you have to show up at the polls with the requirements that your state mandates.

[00:05:10] Certain states have higher ID requirements than others.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:14] Can we pause this for just one minute because I'm forever stuck on this issue of registration and whether I'll actually be on the voter roll when I get to the polling place.

[00:05:24] I know that when you register to vote, you get placed on a voter roll. That's the list that says who can vote at a certain polling place.

[00:05:31] How can it be if I'm a registered voter in my state, I might not be on the list?

[00:05:37] Yeah. All right. People who take issue with the way this particular practice plays out. Call it purging. But states call it list maintenance.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:47] And list maintenance.

[00:05:48] That is when people's names are taken off the voter roll.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:51] Yes. And to be clear, federal law mandates list maintenance. So this is something that states are required to do. If someone [00:06:00] has died or moved or for some reason become an eligible to vote, their name is supposed to be stricken from that list. The specific reasons for canceling a registration are largely up to the states, and they do vary. The idea there is that if lists contain a bunch of people who aren't actually there and or can't actually vote, then you've gotten an accurate representation of a voter pool and you're spending more money on mailing notices, on printing ballots and running elections than you actually need to spend.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:34] Correct me if I'm wrong here, but there are people who say that this is actually a form of voter suppression. Aren't there? Like people who haven't moved. Who are still very much eligible to vote, who show up at their polling places raring to go and discover their name is not on the list.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:50] This happens. And not just to a handful of people. It happens to many hundreds of thousands of eligible and rightfully registered voters, which [00:07:00] in a state where you can register day of that's annoying, but fine. But in a state where you have to preregistered that can pose a real problem.

Achival: [00:07:11] The staggering purge of some 200000 New York City voters from the 2016... Counties with a history of voter discrimination have been purging people at higher rates than the... The Texas secretary of state's office says

[00:07:23] it's questioning the citizenship status of thousands of registered voters... the county removes thousands of registered voters on a regular basis for inactivity... It's supposed to catch people who have moved. But we found it can happen to people who have lived at the same address for years.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:38] These are lists with millions of people on them, and it's human beings doing the list maintenance. And they make mistakes. A lot of them.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:48] So let's say I am a voter who is nervous about this possibility of a voter roll purge or maintenance or whatever. How do I make absolutely sure that my registration is going to count?

Kim Wehle: [00:07:59] So you have to get [00:08:00] your ducks in a row for both. That's why I call it like a recipe. You register. And I -- you could add step 1-B, make sure your registrations up to date, and then B, show up at the polls with whatever documentation that you need to show you, prove that you are who you are.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:14] Bear with me and I'm going to push this just a little bit more because, look, I American Voter X,  am not perfect and maybe just getting to the polls was tricky enough right now in the pandemic. I'm worried about remembering my mask, making sure I have child care taken care of because I can't bring them into the polls and it's a whole megillah. So let's say I get there. I don't have my I.D., but I know I'm eligible. I know I'm registered.

[00:08:38] What do I do?

Kim Wehle: [00:08:45] If they turn you away step three would be always ask for what's called a provisional ballot, which federal law requires them to just give you a backup ballot. Essentially that that may or may not get counted. Depends on the state. Some states make you then follow up with your documentation. [00:09:00] But at least it means that you had an opportunity to have your voice heard. In some measure, you didn't just go home empty handed.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:07] Also, by the way, some states only require that you sign a form confirming your identity. So the processes vary. The important thing is to ask. Actually, the important thing is to demand. If the polling person is still like, sorry to have cookies, no provisional ballot for you, then this is what you say. All right. Give me a provisional ballot with receipt, as is required by law when requested. Memorize that.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:40] Yeah. Very good. Very lawyerly. And I know we address this a bit in part one, but the issue of the polling place itself, like I show up armed with confirm registration and an I.D. and I know what to say. If all else fails and I show up at my polling place and it isn't a polling place at all, it's closed or [00:10:00] as we have seen in recent elections. The line is like six hours long and I have to go take care of my kids.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:07] This is the slightly mushier thing about accessing the polls. And a lot of voting rights advocates would say that stuff like this is pretty hard to defend. Pull closure or understaffed polls. They happen. They happen a lot. And yes, it means that some people end up basically prohibited from voting. States cite all sorts of reasons for closing polls, by the way, from tight budgets to needing to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to a polling place, having had in recent years a low turnout. I brought the closings question to Andrea Hailey. She's the CEO of Vote.org. I also asked her if she thought voting was a partisan subject, by the way. And she also said no. And neither, in her estimation, is reasonable access [00:11:00] to the polls.

Andrea Hailey: [00:11:01] People should ask that of their county and state officials and say, what are the plans?

[00:11:07] Because, look, I had a vote that Oregon, when I went to vote on primary day in Indiana, I did not know that they were closing hundreds of polling locations. I didn't know that my heart was going to be standing in line for hours at a time. It would I think states are going to have to add you're going to have massive closures like that.

[00:11:26] You have to make that really well known to the public. But the public should demand that polling locations stay up. And we know that that polling locations tend to be closed or more difficult to reach, especially for lower income. Folks in this country, I do not think all these closures are a mistake.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:45] The suggestion there is that there is something political going on, isn't it? If these closures are mistaken, that means people are being actively, purposefully denied the vote.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:56] There are a lot of people who would say that is not [00:12:00] the case, that these measures are in place to protect the vote, to keep the vote secure, keep the process unsullied. And you can't discount the fact that even with the protective measures put in place by our Constitution and various laws, those laws don't always translate into action because they're being translated by fallible, corruptible, self-interested human beings. You know that James Madison quote from the Federalist Papers about man in government.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:29] Boy, how do you do, if men were angels no government would be necessary.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:33] Yeah, well, he rounds that off by saying if angels were to govern, men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. Which to me is a pretty way of saying, look behind the glossy operation. There are a bunch of fallible people and those people need to be checked and checked again because they aren't angels. They're capable of corruption. And in fact, power has [00:13:00] a tricky tendency to lead to corruption.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:02] What it sounds like you're suggesting, Hannah, is that we we the people are Madison's external control in this case. We are the ones who look at it from the outside and we notice when things aren't exactly going the way of the angels.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:15] Yeah, that's my take.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:17] So here's my thing. That's really nice in theory. And the idea that voting is how we implement that external control is great. But given all the difficulties, which again, I am now prepped for and given the things we discussed in part one, the Electoral College is a top of mind for me right now. For example, I need to know whether our vote actually works as that external control.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:38] I am going to firmly say yes, yes. And I am sure about that. Remember what we were saying about state and local government in the first part of this episode, that those are the people who we need to concentrate on. That is where the rubber meets the road.

Andrea Hailey: [00:13:57] I mean, state and local elections are the ones that affect your life [00:14:00] more than almost more than any other election. And right now, in this protest moment is a really good example of why local government matters. If you want a mayor that will hold a police chief accountable. You've got to participate in that mayoral election and make sure that that mayor shares your values. If you want a D.A. that is going to, you know, file charges and you elect your D.A., you've got to, you know, figure out who that is and what kind of value system they hold in some southern states. You have the Supreme Court is elected in a few of these southern states. That's really important. These are the judges who are going to set the precedent on how your state laws govern.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:48] We have to remember that state laws govern voting. You know, we might not concentrate too much on state and local, but that that is really where the power starts. And your vote can [00:15:00] actually govern state laws in a way that's external control.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:05] Even in a presidential election?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:06] Yes, there are almost certainly going to be what's called down ballot offices on the presidential election ticket, the so-called lower stakes, less important ones, the ones that people don't necessarily pay attention to. But those are the ones you've got to pay attention to. That's where the change starts. And one last thing that I want to bring up on the subject of does my vote matter? Does it make a difference? The why vote of at all, especially for the people to whom it really matters if they can sway the presidential election? Here's Kim Wehle again.

Kim Wehle: [00:15:45] The votes do matter. I mean, 537 votes in Florida put George Bush in office for eight years, and I don't think anyone can claim that. That didn't change the course of not just American history, but global history of totally reshape the Middle East and [00:16:00] all. Most of us could name five hundred and thirty seven people that we either know personally I've met in our lives or just know of. It's not a lot. So that's number one. Number two, is it less around 50 percent of eligible voters vote? You imagine if that were 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent. I mean, everyone said if we grab one person, get them voting, politicians are going to have a harder time ignoring individual Americans in favor of dark money and corporate and corporate money in politics. So it's going to make your vote matter more if there's a tsunami of civic participation. The third piece has to really do with honoring the privilege of our ancestors and the privilege of actually having free and fair elections. I mean, Americans don't understand. It's not every country where even in a democracy that seems like a democracy, where you really do have a government that is accountable to the people. That is not all in bed with power brokers and money gangsters. I mean, that [00:17:00] is it's a real privilege. I mean, you could be maybe you're a religious person that you believe in a higher power. I feel like I'm blessed. And it's a gift to have been born and have my children born in this country. And it's honoring that gift. It's honoring that privilege that not everyone in the planet has.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:20] I have to tell you, and and when I talk about voting, when I think about voting, I come to it lately, especially with a healthy dose of skepticism, sometimes cynicism. And Kim and You, frankly, are helping remind me that, yeah, we are a representative democracy and not everybody has that in this world. And it is a gift that's something that we have to do.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:42] Yeah. I think part of the idea is the only way to preserve it is to participate in it. Right. To go out and vote while you can. Thank [00:18:00] you for listening to civics one on one. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy. And me, Nick Capodice. With help from Felix Poon and Jacqui Fulton. Erica Janik is building a voting booth in her backyard. But it's just so her dogs can experience the joy of enfranchisement.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:29] Maureen McMurray, she's pretty far down ballot. But she's got the most control over the number of pizza delivery flyers that show up in your mailbox.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:36] Music in this episode by Silicon Transmitter, The Tides, Spectacular Sound Productions, Shaolin Dub and Xylo Xico.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:43] In the past, I would be irritated when shows would ask this question. But now that I work on a show, I find it's necessary. So, dear listener, if you like civics one to one so much that you listen to the credits like you doing now. Please consider leaving us a review on Apple podcast or whatever [00:19:00] you listen to this on. It's tremendously helpful.

[00:19:03] We read them even if they make us cry. And we firmly believe that all feedback makes us better because it does.

[00:19:09] We take it to heart.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:10] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Civic Action: Voting, Part 1

The United States is a representative democracy. The idea is that we’re a government by the people (we vote officials into office) and for the people (the officials in office are supposed to represent our interests). But it’s not so straight forward around here. Take that golden idea and add restrictive voter laws, billions of dollars and a whacky electoral system, and representation takes on a whole different hue.

Our guides to American voting are Nazita Lajevardi, author of Outsides at Home, Kim Wehle, author of What You Need to Know About Voting and Why and Andrea Hailey, CEO of vote.org.

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

Civic Action: Voting, Pt. 1

Archival: [00:00:04] About it is right at the voters eye level, easily red.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:07] I found this old promotional video for one of the automatic voting machines that was rolled out in the 50s.

Archival: [00:00:14] And all offices and all candidates are at the same high level.

Archival: [00:00:19] No candidate suffers by being placed in an unfavorable position.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:22] The machine itself is kind of bizarre looking and frankly does not look all that simple.

[00:00:27] But in order to sell it --

Archival: [00:00:29] Large number of voters who are disenfranchised every year at the paper ballot type poll by making mistakes...

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:35] They compare it to paper ballots.

Archival: [00:00:37] People, often by habit, make check marks on the ballot in states where an X is required.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:43] And it is voter after voter.

[00:00:46] They might as well have stayed home. That vote is a no vote, doesn't count illegal.

[00:00:51] And I'm watching this thing and thinking.

[00:00:56] Don't lady! Uh-uh. It doesn't count.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:57] Well, that [00:01:00] just sounds an awful lot like voting in America today.

Archival: [00:01:06] Good try sir. But this ballot will be thrown out.

News clip: [00:01:09] For the first time in a presidential election.

[00:01:11] Nine more states are enforcing new laws requiring eligible voters to present a government issued photo I.D. At the politics point out that there have been few instances of voter fraud in the U.S. and that in Texas, where the state once blocked African-Americans and Hispanics from voting.

[00:01:28] It's more important to encourage voter participation, as we've already seen in the primary season, the right of the black man and woman to vote.

[00:01:37] It's still not a Guarantee. Laws across the U.S. are being passed to make it harder, not easier to vote is the only advanced democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:01:52] I was at a few BLM protests and, you know, at these protests I got really curious. I ask people, you know, you're really upset you're going to vote.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:59] This is Nazita Lejevardi. [00:02:00]

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:02:01] I am a lawyer and also a political scientist. I teach at Michigan State University. I teach political science, mostly focusing on American politics, studying how racial and ethnic groups fare in American democracy, whether or not they're facing discrimination, the extent to which they're represented, and also how they perceive their inclusion in American democracy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:35] So Nazita's at a Black Lives Matter protest, and she goes up to some of the protesters who are obviously interested in making a difference in society. Right. And she asks them, what you gonna do?

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:02:46] Like, tell me we're gonna do this, you know where I'm going to vote. And I ask them, you know why you're here. You're spending your time on a Tuesday morning. You know, what are you doing here? And they say, you know, Bernie isn't running. Bernie comes back, [00:03:00] then we'll vote.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:02] I have been hearing this a lot. You've got people who just don't see what they want in the candidate pool. So they're just not going to vote. And it has nothing to do with them not caring. It's just they don't feel like they have good choices.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:03:16] And so then you have to understand, like, you know, you may not agree with the politics, but what they want is a different vision of America. They want a different vision of this world. Whatever game we were playing is not representative of their interests or at least what they think their interests are. And so maybe there just aren't enough candidates out there who who represent them.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:34] When we talk about voting in America, the most basic democratic exercise that we've got, we're not just talking about showing up to the polls. We're talking about representation. We're talking about access. It's voting that facilitates our representative democracy. So what does it mean when people feel underrepresented by their options at the polls or when getting [00:04:00] to the polls is a hurdle in and of itself?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:06] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:07] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:08] And this is Civics 101, a podcast about the basics of how our democracy works. And today we talking about the right that isn't a right. The thing that makes this democracy work, even though a lot of people call it broken. We're talking about voting.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:24] Hold it. What do you mean the right that isn't a right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:27] Oh, yeah. First thing that you got to know about voting. Nowhere is it written that you have a right to vote. The Constitution left it to the states to set voting requirements.

[00:04:38] The federal government only says that you can't be prevented from voting due to your sex or the color of your skin. Speaking of preventing people from voting, by the way, let's start there, shall we?

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:04:50] Voting rights for restricted to free white people. And so, like going back and thinking about who could vote and how different immigrant groups, especially like [00:05:00] tried to gain whiteness under the law.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:03] There are exceptions, but for the most part, and until fairly recently, voting was restricted to white people, specifically free white men. Now property and religion factored in here and there, depending on the state. But free, white and male was the golden ticket.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:21] When I think of what the various demographics fighting for the vote. Historically, I think of it as them fighting against discrimination, not fighting to be considered white. What is Nazita talking about in terms of gaining whiteness under the law?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:34] Yeah, a major factor in all of this is the Naturalization Act of 1790. It was our first one that was codified, which in effect made it so that only white free men could become citizens and vote in the U.S..

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:05:48] So I think it's important to think about historically who had access under the law and how to groups make arguments that they were white and especially these immigrant groups who came to the United States. Of course, African-Americans were excluded [00:06:00] from the franchise and continue to be so. But I think it's important to think about when we talk about Asian-Americans, we talk about Latinos, we talk about Middle Easterners, we talk about these other natives, you know, things very important to think that, you know, there's been a number of efforts at trying to be classified as white.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:17] The framers had this notion of a representative democracy. Right. When we say that our government is of by for the people, voting is at the core of that. But the history of voting in the U.S. reveals, of course, that many of the people were and continue to be ineligible for that representation for a long, long time in American history. Citizenship and the vote meant proving your whiteness. Black Americans thought this, of course, and argued for their citizenship, civil rights and enfranchisement as black Americans. But there were so many other groups who felt forced to argue that they could be American citizens because they were free [00:07:00] whites.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:07:00] Which is why you see like Middle Eastern and North Africans classified as white under the census right now these days, that we do talk specifically about the Asian-American vote, the Latin-X vote, for example.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:11] Right. Nazita says that the civil rights movement that fight on the part of black groups to have their civil rights observed and preserved in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in a reinforcement of anti-discrimination laws. And the need to prove your whiteness in order to be enfranchised began to dissolve.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:07:35] Certainly after the civil rights movement and the three major pieces of legislation that came out of the 1965 Civil Rights Acts as the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act.

[00:07:47] So certainly after that period of time, and especially with like the 1970s and seeing like this mobilization of a Latino vote of the Asian-American vote in the 1980s, you do see right groups starting [00:08:00] to find a positionality in American politics.

[00:08:03] And no longer trying to identify with this whiteness because it's no longer the governing law. Right. To be part of the franchise.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:12] And it's not just that whiteness ceases to be the governing law. Right. Nazita says there's something else going on.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:08:19] Also, I think it's important because these groups were finding a voice and were making demands on the democracy. They were making demands for representation. And so certainly there was a shift. And it certainly happened after the civil rights movements for four non-black groups for sure.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:39] Demands for representation. OK. So this is the sticking point again, right?

[00:08:45] People demand to be properly represented by the people making their laws and governing their worlds.

[00:08:51] So if these disparate groups have achieved the right to vote and they exercise that right. They should see themselves represented, correct?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:00] Maybe, [00:09:00] maybe if you're in a perfectly balanced electoral system, that might be the case. But a perfectly balanced electoral system.

[00:09:09] We do not have.

Kim Wehle: [00:09:10] The framers left a lot of electoral politics to the states.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:14] This is Kim Wehle.

Kim Wehle: [00:09:15] I am Kim Wehle. I'm a professor of law at the University of Baltimore and author of my second book, What You Need to Know About Voting and Why.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:23] Oh, Kim Wehle.

[00:09:24] She talked us through the Constitution back in the day.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:27] She did indeed. And this time she schooled me on how voting actually works in the U.S. and what that means for representation. I'm going to go over the major ones here. I think you can probably guess the big one, Nick, a little something called congressional redistricting.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:43] Or to friends of old Elbridge Gerry, gerrymandering.

[00:09:48] That's called a portmanteau word, did you know that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:51] Is that what a portmanteau is?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:51] Yeah portmanteau is when you like mash together two words and make a new word. Yeah.

[00:09:56] So it's it's comes from a mixture of Gerry and Salamander. Gerry [00:10:00] was governor of Massachusetts during some sneaky district redrawing and the salamander part because of the wiggly shape the district ends up having when you bend them around party lines.

Kim Wehle: [00:10:10] And one of the things states get to do is decide how to carve up the districts that go to the United States Congress that represent the Congress. So if you did it logically, you might take a state like Maryland where I live and you might put a big plus sign in the middle of it, make, you know, for congressional districts and just assume there's four congressional members of Congress and each quarter gets the population of each quarter gets one person.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:34] And I think we know that is how things did not go.

Kim Wehle: [00:10:36] Well, we don't have to carve it up in logical ways like a map maker might do. Let's figure out where all Republicans are, all are, Democrats are, and we'll make the salamander light, distorted, tortured districts that kind of cluster or either cluster or break up people from one party. So if you imagine instead of a plus in Maryland, we put circles around all the Democrats and [00:11:00] they don't have to be necessarily equal in size or you did. You do have to be equal representation in terms of the numbers of people. But we'll send we'll carve it up in a way that we just know it's always going to be Democrats living in that city.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:14] See, in a lot of states, it's the state legislature that's in charge of drawing the district lines, which means the majority party can draw those lines in favor of their party.

Kim Wehle: [00:11:25] And so even if the whole state has more Republicans in one day, don't they'll never get a completely Republican representation in Congress because of this gerrymandering.

[00:11:36] So people criticize it legitimately because it's the state lawmakers from a particular party that carve up the districts. And so the politicians are picking their voters instead of the voters picking the politicians.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:49] The drawing of districts is not necessarily political. It's just that the way things go is that the people in power are on the right or the [00:12:00] left, and that is how the districts end up being drawn. And another thing that draws a big fat line between the voter and getting represented by the person who really represents you as a person money. One recent Supreme Court case in particular called Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, ruled that corporations have a right to political speech, which means they can spend big, big money on things like ads for their preferred candidate.

Kim Wehle: [00:12:28] So now politicians care more about raising money from not individual constituents, but from big corporations and, you know, anonymous donors that can put as much money as possible on the airwaves in support of an issue that the candidate cares about.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:41] And what you really need to know here is despite campaign finance reform that has limited the amount of money individuals can give to a campaign. Money has found a way to be very much involved in getting people elected. Why is that a problem for you as an individual?

Kim Wehle: [00:12:58] So this is where billionaires [00:13:00] have big impacts. They still have their First Amendment rights. They want to hire some fancy firm from New York City to spend tons of money flooding the airways waves. They can still do that as individuals. But when it comes to regular people that have bread and butter issues and budgets, we're stuck at twenty seven hundred dollars. And that's a problem in our campaign finance system. But because the Supreme Court has treated corporate speech as a First Amendment right without a constitutional amendment that can't really change. Congress can't fix that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:33] And there's that one last thing that I'm going to mention here.

[00:13:36] When it comes to unevenness in representation, when you go to the polls, you're voting for your delegate, the or the delegate to Electoral College. You're not actually voting for the president.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:46] Saw this one coming.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:47] It always seems to boil down to the Electoral College.

Kim Wehle: [00:13:50] So most states say You, a state again has 10 delegates and say 51 percent of the [00:14:00] voters in that state voted for Donald Trump, 49 percent voted for Hillary Clinton.

[00:14:07] All 10 delegates will go to Donald Trump.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:12] So that's a winner take all system the winner take all electoral college system, which we have mentioned many, many times before on this show, means that someone can win the popular vote but lose the election. It also means that a lot of voters are going to end up feeling unheard and unrepresented.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:31] And I hate to add potholes to this rocky road to representation. But, you know, Hanna, we still have not talked about the barriers to getting to the polls and to actually being able to cast your vote once you're there.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:14:43] I mean, I think I think what people don't realize is how much how much planning goes into you and strategy goes into mobilizing and demobilizing folks to vote.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:56] Here's Nazita again.

Nazita Lejevardi: [00:14:57] So oftentimes we say to ourselves, like, oh, [00:15:00] you know, by 2040, you know, America is going to be majority minority. And so it really won't matter that that's actually not true because, you know, there are there are factions there are groups that are interest groups that are being mobilized to keep people away from the polls. Right. Even, for instance, like with absentee ballots, the number of ballots that are thrown away because the signatures, quote unquote, don't match. Right. Is so incredibly disproportionate in certain areas that, you know, her larger percentage of minorities. Right. And, you know, we can't say we can't draw so many causal arguments as we would like.

[00:15:34] All we can say is there seems to be an association. But, you know, it does seem like there is a there there when you take the totality of the picture together.

Long Shots promo: [00:15:44] Hello, everyone. We just wanted to take a quick second to share a podcast that Civics want to win listeners might enjoy. And it's about losers.

[00:15:55] The show is called Long Shots. And in it, former foreign correspondent and CNN contributor [00:16:00] Connor Powell explores eight presidential contenders, men and women whose losing campaign had a massive impact on our politics.

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[00:16:21] You can listen to Long Shots wherever you get your podcasts or on the web site. longshotspodcast.com.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:30] So even after disenfranchised minorities clawed their way into recognition and a right to vote, there's still a massive effort to stifle their votes.

Andrea Hailey: [00:16:39] There have been a series of rules and laws put in place to keep people. Politicians are at the point where they're picking their voters rather than voters picking politicians.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:50] This is Andrea Hailey.

Andrea Hailey: [00:16:51] CEO Vote.org.

[00:16:53] We're a tech platform that simplifies the process of registering to vote or requesting your absentee [00:17:00] ballot.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:01] I called up Andrea because things were feeling a little dodgy, Nick. You know, I was looking at this screwy electoral process, efforts at voter suppression. And I'm thinking of those protesters that Nazita mentioned at the beginning of this episode who were like, now we're not going to bother voting. And I hate to say it, but I started to think. What if they are right?

Nick Capodice: [00:17:23] No.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:24] Well, no.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:25] No.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:25] They're not. But I'm going to get to that in a minute. The point is, Andrea runs a site devoted to making it as clear and simple as possible for people across the spectrum to vote. And she was in full acknowledgement. Disenfranchisement is real and it's multifaceted. It's voter suppression, but it's also a lack of options.

Andrea Hailey: [00:17:46] You see people working really hard to overcome odds, those odds, and jumped through all of those hoops to make sure their voice is still heard and they can elect leaders who reflect their own value systems. And so I think that, you know, we know [00:18:00] that young people and people of color have been historically disenfranchised in the voting process and have extra barriers to overcome. And there's several of those barriers. There's, you know, the fact that Election Day is not a holiday. There's all the voter I.D. laws that were brought in, the closing of polling locations that are convenient for people, misinformation about voting. There's there's a whole series host of things that keep people separate from the right to vote.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:34] Is this about when you started to agree with the vote abstainers? Because I'm starting to feel a little down about it myself.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:40] Here is what I hadn't factored in, though, for every person to disillusioned and sometimes rightfully to vote. There's a voter waiting in an hours long line in the stifling heat or rain just to be heard.

News clip: [00:18:54] The amount of people in line shocking to see in the middle of a pandemic. When we first put up causes on [00:19:00] both side of the rules, that high turnout turned into long lines in DeKalb and Fulton County because of problems with the state's new touchscreen voting equipment used.

Andrea Hailey: [00:19:08] One of the things that I'm really excited about, though, if you just looked at the Georgia primary, is the resilience of the American voter, because despite long lines, despite people, the last voters voting at 12, 30 in the morning, a lot of people jumped through all those hoops and overcame those barriers. And I think that moving forward, one of the things that the American public can start to demand is a voting process that makes it easy and convenient for them to have their voice heard. And if their elected officials who who make it more difficult, they can work to fire those people.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:43] In other words, think small, think state and local government, the ones who make the voting laws in your state.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:50] Right. Who is in charge of making it easier or harder for you to vote? Are they someone who you get to vote for? And before Election Day even comes, [00:20:00] Andrea says, what can you do to make sure those officials help you out?

Andrea Hailey: [00:20:05] I think that there needs to be pressure on officials to announce their plan early so that voters can do their job, you know, in show up.

[00:20:14] And I think that it's now on election officials to say how they're going to administer this election in a way that imagines enfranchising the highest number of people possible, like that's literally their whole job is to is to administer safe and free and fair elections.

[00:20:34] So it's it's time for them to do that and to let us know what the plan is for Election Day so that we don't see repeats of Georgia or anywhere else across the country. And I think that that's something that voters can absolutely demand from their county officials, from their secretaries of state, you know, demand that that people make it easy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:58] Andrea's thing is basically OK. [00:21:00] Yes, there are loads of systems in place to disenfranchise You, especially those of you who have worked so hard over centuries to be granted enfranchisement. Chances are, the harder your demographic has worked for the vote, the harder it is going to be for you to exercise your vote.

[00:21:19] But starting at the state level, showing up and refusing to go away without a ballot or asking for that mail in ballot early. These are the small steps you can take to push the system to work for you.

Andrea Hailey: [00:21:32] We always say this make a plan, make it early, but this year in particular, truly make a plan and make it early and request absentee ballots early, because what happens is that a whole bunch of people start requesting their absentee. Leading up to the deadline, which causes a run on states and will cause issues in states that are not used to handling a high volume of those requests. So go ahead, get your request in early. That [00:22:00] is one part of the plan. And then secondly, blackout time on Election Day, if you can. And if you can't ask your employer for that time on Election Day, because if the system does get overrun or if your ballot doesn't come to you or something like that, then you'll have to go and vote in person. And voting in person this year may mean long lines.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:20] Andrea says things like demanding that polling places stay open, demanding that your polling place provides personal protective equipment, even being willing if you're a young person, to volunteer as a poll person. All of this can mean the difference between disenfranchised individuals getting a chance to vote or not.

Nick Capodice: [00:22:45] All right, so I'm hearing that if you want a clear, demonstrably effective way to make sure voting means real representation and open polling place with a knowledgeable volunteer, AK You is one answer.

[00:22:58] I do think, though, that given [00:23:00] all of these barriers, another obvious step is just know how to vote. Right.

[00:23:06] Right. But you know what? I decided we need a whole other episode to lay that one out. That's in part two of our voting episode: How to Vote, here on Civics 101.

[00:23:20] This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Jackie Fulton and Felix Poon. Erica Janik opt out of the I voted sticker in favor of crocheting. I voted sweater vests. Maureen McMurry makes waiting in line at the polls look like an art form. Music in this episode by Silicon Transmitter, Patrick Patrikios, Jesse Gallagher, Astron and The Mini Vandals. There are oh so many resources out there for you, dear voter. And we've compiled a bunch of them at our Website, civics101podcast.org. Why don't you drop us a line while you're there? You've got a question about American democracy wearing a hole in your pocket. We will take it and make you an episode while we're at it. [00:24:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Posse Comitatus

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 as the Reconstruction drew to a close and troops were pulled out of the southeastern United States. The idea was to prevent the military from enforcing laws. After all, that’s what law enforcement is for — state and local police forces are the ones deputized to do that work. But what does it mean when the police use military gear and tactics to enforce that law? Ashley Farmer, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Sciences at Illinois State University breaks it down.

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Transcript

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Posse Comitatus

CPB: [00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:04] Nick, a while back, a couple of our listeners visited the station and one of them, Barbara, when she stopped by our desks. She brought up something called the Posse Comitatus Act and asked us to do an episode on it. Do you remember this?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:21] I do remember. And we put it on the long list of things we were going to do at Civics 101.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:26] But then, of course, the pandemic changed everything, including our schedule. Plans were shifted, things were delayed. And then earlier this month, we got an email from Barbara and it just said, "is now a good time to talk about Posse Comitatus?"

Archival: [00:00:44] We're going to begin with breaking news tonight out of Minneapolis, where the National Guard is being mobilized after violent protests erupted overnight over the death of George Floyd.

Archival: [00:00:54] The use of force against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square by federal law enforcement backed by the [00:01:00] U.S. military's National Guard, sparked a nationwide debate about the role of the military and civil society.

[00:01:06] And Trump is threatening to deploy heavily armed soldiers to restore peace if local authorities don't act.

[00:01:12] I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.

[00:01:18] And the answer, Barbara, is yes. And thanks. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:28] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:29] And today on Civics 101 we're tackling this seemingly obscure Latin term and why it is particularly relevant these days.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:38] Let's get that Latin out of the way, please.

Ashley Farmer: [00:01:40] Directly translated from Latin, it just means power of the county. But in relation to this act, it refers to any group of armed persons meant to address lawlessness.

[00:01:50] This is Ashley Farmer.

[00:01:51] I'm an assistant professor in criminal justice sciences at Illinois State University. And my work really centers on policing, police, community [00:02:00] relations. And as part of that, I've also studied police militarization.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:03] Right. So if you hadn't already guessed the term Posse Comitatus in the context of an act of Congress has something to do with policing of a sort.

Ashley Farmer: [00:02:15] So the provisions most directly say that it is just not lawful to use the army of the United States as a posse comitatus or a group of armed persons for the purpose of carrying out laws. So the initial purpose of the act was just to limit the federal government's power to use the military for policing.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:33] All right. Got it. This is where the president comes in. He says he's going to send troops to enforce things. And people are saying, well, you can't because of this act. Right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:43] Right. And the thing is, that is not really true. We're going to get to that in a minute. First, what is the story of the Posse Comitatus Act?

Ashley Farmer: [00:02:58] This actually came about [00:03:00] at the end of the reconstruction era after the Civil War. And it was really a result of the compromise of 1877, which addressed the very hotly contested presidential election of 1876 because there were allegations that federal troops had interfered with that election.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:19] Right. I know this story. This is the Hayes-Tilden election. Right. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, is running against Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican. And Tilden won the popular vote and was leading in the Electoral College. But there were a bunch of contested electoral votes and widespread allegations of voter fraud.

Ashley Farmer: [00:03:38] So there were disputes as to whether or not the winner was Hayes or Tilden. So a congressional commission awarded Hayes the electoral votes needed for him to win that election. But in order to do that, he needed to make some concessions. And one of those concessions was that he had to agree to withdraw federal troops from the south.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:58] Right. This is happening [00:04:00] during the reconstruction period following the Civil War. Congress had passed a series of acts on top of the reconstruction amendments to protect the civil rights of black Americans. But federal troops were needed to enforce those rights and to prevent another mass uprising of white southerners while they figured out how to reconstitute these rebel states. It should also be noted, by the way, that these troops could not prevent the continued everyday incidents of racially motivated violence against black Americans in the South. So the Hayes-Tilden election happens. Democrats, that's Tilden's party, want these troops out of there. They also think that the troops somehow influenced the election by enforcing people's rights at polling places. Hayes party. The Republicans wanted the presidency, so they made a deal.

[00:04:54] Hayes got the presidency and he pulled the troops out of the south.

Ashley Farmer: [00:04:59] And once he did [00:05:00] this, the reconstruction era completely collapsed. And as a result, the civil rights that blacks had been promised in the south never came about. So it was originally intended to make it difficult for federal forces to execute those criminal laws in the south, which they had been doing all throughout the Reconstruction era.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:18] So Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in response to the use of troops in the South. But it also sounds like it allowed for the environment to basically rollback all enforcement of the reconstruction amendments.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:32] Yeah, it certainly helped to make room for the Jim Crow era south. This was a period of state and local laws that enforced segregation and fostered violence and oppression toward black Americans.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:44] Hello, everyone. We just wanted to take a quick second to share a podcast that civics one of our listeners might enjoy. And it's about losers.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:55] The show is called Long Shots. And in it, former foreign correspondent and CNN [00:06:00] contributor Connor Powell explores eight presidential contenders, men and women whose losing campaign had a massive impact on our politics.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:09] These are people like Pat Robertson, whose 1988 campaign showed the way for a new Republican right or Victoria

[00:06:15] Woodhull, who ran on a free love feminist platform in '72, 1872.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:21] You can listen to longshots wherever you get your podcasts or on their Web site. LongShotspodcast.com

Nick Capodice: [00:06:30] Hold it. I'm also thinking of how Jim Crow laws specifically were protested and challenged sometimes by the federal government and how sometimes a Southern governor would send in the National Guard to enforce that Jim Crow law, even if it was in violation of federal civil rights law. Like with Governor Orval Faubus using the Arkansas National Guard to prevent Little Rock high school desegregation.

Archival: [00:06:56] National Guard troops continue to surround Central High School tomorrow morning?

Governor Orval Faubus: [00:07:01] Well, the troops will still be on duty tomorrow morning.  [00:07:00]

Archival: [00:07:01] They will be.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:04] Isn't that a violation of Posse Comitatus?

Ashley Farmer: [00:07:06] No.

[00:07:08] The National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard are not included in this unless they are drawn up by the president. And in order to do that, the president would have to use the Insurrection Act. However, if the National Guard is called up by the state governor, because technically that's you can't call them up, then it does not fall under the Posse Comitatus Act. So that's why we've seen the National Guard respond to protests most recently in states, because the governors have asked them to come. We saw this after Ferguson as well. We also saw it after standing rock with the protest against the Dakota access pipeline.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:46] I should note, the act only officially pertains to the army and the Air Force, but there are extensions in place for the Navy and the Marines and the Coast Guard and the Space Force have similar provisions. And if we think about the basics [00:08:00] of the Posse Comitatus Act right? The fact that it's meant to separate the military, a federal operation from essentially policing, a state and local operation, then we also have to ask how and if the act is meaningfully being enforced today.

Ashley Farmer: [00:08:18] I think that in contemporary times you can go back to the 1960s when we had a lot of racial unrest in America.

Ashley Farmer: [00:08:27] You had the Watts uprisings in Los Angeles, which was protesting the unequal treatment and violence at the hands of police. So very similar to things that are still happening today.

Archival: [00:08:38] A curfew and blockade of the entire area was imposed and lasted in excess of 48 hours. National Guard troops were billeted in schools, armories, and in the famous Hollywood Park, race track, which was a major staging area for National Guard troops.

Ashley Farmer: [00:08:54] And the government responded with increasing the police power. It was also during the 1960s that we saw the creation [00:09:00] of the first SWAT team. Also in Los Angeles. The SWAT team was created through consultation with military officials to learn how to deal with snipers. If you keep going through history, then up through the 70s and 80s, we of course have the war on drugs.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:14] This is a big one. And I just want to point out, it's not just that we launched something called the war on Drugs. It's the fact that we called it the war on drugs. Police engaging in a war.

Ashley Farmer: [00:09:30] Absolutely. That is one of the dimensions of police militarization has to do with cultural beliefs. And that includes language. How we talk about crime, the war on crime, as he mentioned, the war on drugs. So even the language that we use to talk about these crime problems is very focused and very militaristic.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:48] What did this consulting with the military actually practically do to the police?

Ashley Farmer: [00:09:55] So when you have these PPUs or police paramilitary units like SWAT teams, [00:10:00] they started to do more and more routine police work like drug raids, search warrants for drugs. And those types of things really increased during the war on drugs.

[00:10:11] You saw also as part of this no knock raids by SWAT teams, which is where they used dynamic entry like this element of surprise in order to capture people in the act. It doesn't give them time to sort of get rid of evidence, for example. But we've also seen a lot of problems with no knock raids. Most recently with the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. That was the result of a no-knock raid.

[00:10:36] You also had something in the early 80s as part of the war on drugs that relates to this act. It was called the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Officials Act in 1981. This meant that military personnel were allowed to distribute information about illegal drugs to local police departments, which had this clear relationship formed between them then and just further [00:11:00] blurred those lines between the military and the police.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:03] It's not just information sharing either.

[00:11:06] In order to aid in the police war on drugs and crime and poverty, the military provide the police with gear, too.

Ashley Farmer: [00:11:14] And so the Department of Defense supplied local law enforcement agencies with military gear and military training to help with that drug activity and to be a part of the war on drugs. So this was done through a program called the 1033 program. It was originally created in 1989, and it was meant to be a temporary funding program for local police agencies. But in 1997, this was made permanent.

Archival: [00:11:40] Local police are becoming ever more heavily armed or as many put it, militarized. It looks like a military operation. And that's because police departments in the St. Louis area, like those across the country, are arming their officers with equipment

[00:11:57] once on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan [00:12:00]. Many have been talking about how military equipment is making its way from the Department of Defense to police departments around the country.

Ashley Farmer: [00:12:08] And so this statute, along with that earlier act in 1981, kind of continued to blur those lines.

[00:12:16] And then you had 9/11. So now we not only have the war on drugs and the war on crime, but you also have the war on terrorism.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:23] When Ashley says the police are getting gear from the military, what kind of gear are we talking about?

Ashley Farmer: [00:12:29] You know, mundane things like office supplies all the way up to military vehicles, night vision goggles. Of course, weapons and ammunition are included in this as well. And there's really no oversight or guidelines in place for how police departments use it once acquired. They do have to use the equipment within one year. But what that means is if they don't have an apparent purpose right away, they'll find a way to use it. And, you know, it's funny because sometimes the way we see them use it or the way I've seen small police departments [00:13:00] use things like this in the past parades. Right. You know, kids come take a picture with this military vehicle that has our police department logo on it.

Archival: [00:13:07] We do a lot of demos. We'll go out to different community events. And kids just love to get around and see it jump in the back and just sit where an actual officer, SWAT officer sits.

Ashley Farmer: [00:13:19] They can find

[00:13:19] very creative ways to use these materials. These military surplus equipment so that they can justify keeping it.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:33] To explain to me how, given Posse Comitatus, the military, a federal entity, is allowed to work with police.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:41] Ashley basically explained it as well. It's not the military policing. It's police becoming militarized. And she did want to make this distinction.

Ashley Farmer: [00:13:53] I think it's important to remember that the military and the police have very different mandates and very different purposes. The military are trained [00:14:00] for war. They're trained to kill the enemy. Police are technically supposed to be trained to protect and serve communities. Those are very different goals. And so trying to blur those lines and say that they can work together like this really doesn't make sense in terms of what their mandates are.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:17] All right. There is a reason, though, that we've seen Posse Comitatus come up a lot recently. Right? We've seen it on Twitter. There's a reason we got that listener question from Barbara. Posse Comitatus does prevent the president from using the military to enforce laws in the U.S., doesn't it?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:39] Not really.

Ashley Farmer: [00:14:40] Basically, so there are different ways that the president can get around it. As I mentioned, the Insurrection Act. States can get around it by using the National Guard or the U.S. Coast Guard. We've seen that happen multiple times. And, of course, you can also authorize it by the Constitution or through acts of Congress.

Archival: [00:14:58] A couple of blocks north of the White [00:15:00] House.

[00:15:00] You got National Guard down the next block. All kinds of Washington metro police here. I've seen Humvees down the end of this street and the next street. We've had Blackhawk helicopters flying literally just above rooftop level of these low rise office buildings and not a demonstrator in sight, at least not in the vicinity of the White House. They are marching...

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:19] The Insurrection Act, by the way, says that the president can go deploy U.S. military and federalize the National Guard to suppress civil disorder, insurrection and rebellion. It was invoked fairly regularly during the civil rights era. It was how President John F. Kennedy enforced desegregation in Alabama schools. And it's been used a couple of times since during disorder, following Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and during the 1992 L.A. uprising that was following the brutal beating of Rodney King at the hands of police officers. Those last two happened under President George Bush [00:16:00] Senior.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:01] So what I'm getting and correct me if I'm wrong here, what I'm getting is that Posse Comitatus means a lot on paper, but might not in reality. Has Congress ever made attempts to strengthen the act so it actually meant something?

Ashley Farmer: [00:16:15] This is interesting because after the protest in Ferguson, the Obama administration did try to prohibit certain types of equipment going to local law enforcement agencies. The police department and Ferguson was heavily militarized. I mean, we saw what that looked like several years ago in response to those protests there. And so he did create some oversight in terms of the ten thirty three program that helped lower the misuse of acquired military equipment. But those have not been rolled back in the Trump administration.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:47] So all of this for Americans who read or know about this act and believe it should be enforced in a particular way is possibly distressing. Right. Like, [00:17:00] what's the point of it if it isn't being used to effect? And Ashley basically pointed out that, well, part of the point is that questions are being asked. The fact that this act is being brought up at all means that the public is noticing a lack of a divide between a federal and state force.

Ashley Farmer: [00:17:24] In terms of invoking it today

[00:17:25] I mean, I do think that anytime we see a heavily militarized police response or we see National Guard troops interacting with citizens on the street as sort of police officers or at the very least they're sort of monitoring the situation on the street between police and protesters. It's going to raise questions. And so this is an act that sort of says, hey, you have to have this strong divide between the military and the police. But, of course, historically speaking, that divide has become more and more blurred throughout the recent decades.

Archival: [00:18:03] In [00:18:00] the largest public safety operation in Minnesota's history, local and state police and 4000 members of the National Guard took a stand.

[00:18:13] Aggressively using tear gas, pepper spray and drawn weapons in a desperate attempt to squelch days of escalating chaos. There's another flash bang grenade. There definitely esc-- The police are escalating... Rubber bullet rounds. And they hurt.

[00:18:34] He just was pepper sprayed, right there. Police. Police today. Tear gas or smoke, tear gas or smoke.

[00:19:13] Today's [00:19:00] episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Felix Poon and Jacqui Fulton. Erica Janik wages war on poor word choice and historical inaccuracies. Maureen McMurray, eats insurrection for breakfast. Music in this episode by Xylo Xico, Parallel Park, Meydn, Future Mano and Rage. School's out, but if you're hankering for deeper dives into some civics 101 episodes, you can still check out our Learn at home page. That's at Civics101podcast.org. Learn at home. We've got lessons, games and tons of resources to while away those summer hours with some good old fashioned civics knowledge. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and as a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Civic Action: Protest

What is protest, constitutionally? Historically? What is protected, and what is not? And what do you have to know before you grab a sign and go outside? Today we explore the long scope of public dissent from the Boston Tea Party to the current #blacklivesmatter protests.

Our guests are Alvin Tillery from Northwestern University, and Bakari Sellers, CNN commentator and author of the recent book My Vanishing Country.

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Transcript

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

PROTEST

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Kayleigh McEnany: [00:00:10] The president has made clear that what we are seeing on America's streets is unacceptable. Violence, looting, anarchy, lawlessness are not to be tolerated. Plain and simple, these criminal acts are not protest. They are not statements. These are crimes that aren't innocent American citizens.

Alvin Tillery: [00:00:31] I do see a kind of inherent double standard in the way we valorize certain anger, certain property damage. And, you know, if the cause is racial justice or LGBTQ rights or women's rights, you know, our history has been much more...whoa. This is a this is violating the social order here. What's going on? Like, oh, my God, they've kicked in a Nordstrom's. We teach literally kindergartners about the Boston Tea Party.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:04] This is Alvin Tillery. He's the director for the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University.

Alvin Tillery: [00:01:10] And I research social movements and leadership. And I've been writing about the Black Lives Matter movement with hopes that some of my research can help them succeed.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:22] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:23] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:24] And this is Civics 101, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. And since we are in the midst of the largest nationwide protest I've seen in my lifetime, we wanted to call Alvin to tell us about it, about protest. What it is what it does and has done throughout our country's history.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:45] Now, in terms of what it is, at its most basic level, it's people expressing their disapproval of something, right? Yes.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:56] And did you happen to see the thing Sesame Street put up this week of Elmo trying to. Did you see that?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:03] I did see that.

Sesame Street: [00:02:04] What's a protest? A protest is when people come together to show they are upset and disagree about something, they want to make others aware of the problem through protesting. People are able to share their feelings and work together to make things better.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:22] But legally, constitutionally, protest has been with us from the very beginning. It's written into our founding documents.

Alvin Tillery: [00:02:31] The Constitution makes protest along with speech and the free exercise of religion sacrosanct. It is the charter, right? One of the one of the charter rights and the First Amendment, the fundamental freedoms doctrine says that the First Amendment is really the one that is necessary in order to make all of the other freedoms operative. So there's what we call the right to assembly clause in the First Amendment. So Congress shall make no law. Right. And then it says in the assembly clause, it says Congress shall make no law to prohibit the right of the people to peaceably, peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Now, some people separate that and say that there are two clauses, the petition clause and the and the peaceable assembly clause. But I always saw them as kind of one clause.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:31] I haven't heard of the petition clause. What's the difference between protest and petition?

Alvin Tillery: [00:03:36] So petition is writing to your government, sort of expressing yourself to your government.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:43] And people could petition about anything except for a period when slavery was essentially off limits.

Alvin Tillery: [00:03:50] The gag rule that was in Congress in the eighteen thirties up to the Civil War said, you know, you couldn't even write to Congress or make petitions to Congress about ending slavery.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:02] This gag order was in the eighteen thirties when abolitionists had sent hundreds of thousands of petitions to Congress calling for an end to slavery. And Congress passed a blanket resolution that any petitions doing so are to be tabled indefinitely. Former President John Quincy Adams. He fought against it for eight years until it was finally lifted in 1844. But we don't see the Supreme Court weighing in on citizens rights to petition the government until much, much later.

Alvin Tillery: [00:04:31] We really don't even get a lot of good jurisprudence on assembly and freedom of speech until the cases that come at the height of World War One. All of the cases where the Supreme Court actually limits freedom of speech in order to protect government interests.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:55] These cases, which all arose during World War One, are the first time that the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of protest. The Big Three are Schenck v. U.S..That's where Charles Schenck was arrested for handing out pamphlets that criticized the draft. The next one's Gitlow v. New York, where the court decided, Benjamín Gitlow's pro communism manifesto was not protected speech. And finally, Abram's v. United States, where the court said the same about leaflets that advocated workers in ammunition factories go on strike.

Alvin Tillery: [00:05:25] Yeah, the great irony is that the formal elaboration in the early 20th century of our rights to, you know, not only petition and sort of act as individuals, but typically part of a protest. Those rights are are enumerated in cases where the Supreme Court limits the freedoms of the individuals involved.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:51] All right. So I've I've got this. That's how the court started to rule against the rights of protesters. But I'm interested in laws regarding the response to protest. Have there been any cases that address the powers of police?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:05] Yeah, well, police power comes at the local and state level. So many of these cases began with police action and then the issue at stake rose through the court system to the Supreme Court.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:15] So what are the big cases where constitutional right to protest was protected?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:21] Alvin said there have been pretty much two. And we've talked about both of them quite a bit on her show, Tinker V. Des Moines, that's the one where black armbands worn by students to protest the war were protected speech and Texas v. Johnson, where the same was decided regarding burning a flag. However, this isn't to say that there haven't been other legal rulings on the right to protest rulings that have protected the rights of groups. That may surprise you.

Alvin Tillery: [00:06:47] The other irony is that when the court in the 20th century has expanded and protected protesters, they've typically been the most noxious protesters that we will look like. So the Klan can burn crosses, you know, in the 2003 case

Justice Rhenquist: [00:07:05] Record number, 01107 Virginia against Black will be announced by Justice O'Connor.

Justice O'Connor: [00:07:11] The act of burning across may mean that the person is engaging in constitutionally prescribable intimidation, or it may mean only that the person is engaged in core political speech The prima facie provision...

Nick Capodice: [00:07:26] And it's not just one case, it's not just Virginia v. Black from the early 2000s. Protest by the KKK specifically was protected in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.

Alvin Tillery: [00:07:38] In the Brandenburg versus Ohio case, now, the Supreme Court says the Fourteenth Amendment does not draw down or limit the ability of the Klan to advocate violence at its rallies. Right. Unless they are going to, you know, say let's go and lynch black people now or let's go and burn the police station down now. Right. But you can you go to a Klan rally and say, you know, we hate black people and, you know, let's use Second Amendment solutions to get out Barack Obama. You can do all of that thanks to the Brandenburg case.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:11] So I want to if we can get back to something Alvin mentioned at the very beginning, and that's that politicians and the public alike are calling for nonviolent protest and referencing the work done by Martin Luther King Junior and Rosa Parks.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:28] Yeah. So when we talk of peaceful protests, Alvin shared his polling data with me and he said the numbers of those who oppose the current Black Lives Matter protests are nearly identical with those who opposed NFL player Colin Kaepernick demonstrably nonviolent action of kneeling during the national anthem to protest the treatment of minorities.

Eboni Williams: [00:08:49] You know, certainly many people would agree that it's very American to to protest and it.

Bill O'Reilly: [00:08:55]  There's a difference between a protest and a disrespectful protest. All right. There's a difference. And everybody should know that. My solution to this...

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:02] Then there's the fact that we teach kindergartners that destroying property in protest when it's tea. The Boston Tea Party is great and necessary. So what's going on there?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:21] Do you know the modern day value of that team that was dumped in the harbor one point seven million dollars?

Alvin Tillery: [00:09:27] Firstly, I'll say that, you know, attacking British authority by destroying property was a very common way that the colonists protested. The Tea Party in Boston Harbor is interesting because they dressed as Native Americans because they want to hide their identity so they don't even do it in their own under their own identities. They hide under the guise of indigenous people, which if you know anything about indigenous history in Massachusetts. It's absolutely preposterous. They'd been sort of decimated by the colonists, you know, 80, 90 years earlier and then in the Pequot Wars. And so, you know, the idea that the indigenous people would have snuck into the harbour to burn tea or dumped dumped tea into the harbors is preposterous. Right. But but there was a class element to all of these uprisings. Right. These were the working people.

Alvin Tillery: [00:10:28] These were the Scotch Irish immigrants. These were Crispus Attucks, the biracial former slaves who were the kind of vanguard of the revolution. Right.

Alvin Tillery: [00:10:41] Who, you know, Sam Adams had organized in the Sons of Liberty to get out and to make these kinds of jarring, disruptive, often violent protests to raise the consciousness of the other colonists who were like, whoa, like, I don't like paying these tea and stamp taxes either, but like, we're still British, man. Calm down. Right.

Alvin Tillery: [00:11:02] And so this kind of, you know, rallying effect behind property damage is part of what the the early organizers hope to do.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:13] Alvin said that there have been so far in American history, three movements that changed our country. The Boston Tea Party, Shay's Rebellion, which began in 1786 over wartime debt and led to necessity for a new constitution. And finally, the long, still continuing civil rights movement, which stretches from early abolitionists to its peak in the 1950s and 60s.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:36] You know, scholars have for a while now been pointing out that there's been lots of violence and there have been a lot of riots that maybe you and I didn't learn about in school for many reasons, one of which is that the victims were not white.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:54] This is after the Civil War. One of the first that comes to mind is the one that was depicted in the TV series The Watchmen, the bombing of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921.

Alvin Tillery: [00:12:04] Those are riots that we have forgotten intentionally because they were riots that were done to keep the racial order in place.

Alvin Tillery: [00:12:17] Those hundred and thirty riots that happened between the reconstruction in 1945, those were race riots that were done because, again, low status elements were upset typically that blacks or Asians would have, had violated some imaginary, you know, segregation line in these places and hundreds and hundreds of people died in each instance. Right. This is the modal, you know, riot in American history. It's a race riot to destroy, you know, communities of color, typically to seize property. Look what happened in the Greenwood district in Oklahoma. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wilmington, North Carolina. East St. Louis, Illinois. These are riots that razed these communities. The outsiders, the black, brown, you know, Asian outsiders flee and then low status whites claim all that property. Right. If these are there, these are redistributions through riotous behavior. Right.

Alvin Tillery: [00:13:28] And so, you know, we don't like to talk much about that. Most Americans think that when you think race riot, you think, oh, what happened in Watts and Newark after Dr. King was assassinated? Right. And that's just a drop in the bucket of our our history of rioting in this country.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:49] These riots against communities of color resulted in their property being taken.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:57] Yeah, taking property was the express purpose of many of these riots. The name for it is white capping. I read that between 1880 and nineteen hundred and there were two hundred and thirty nine documented instances of it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:14] Okay, Nick, you have talked to Alvin about the history and protections and lack of protections around protest, but due to the fact that many Americans are viewing current protests in the context of that long civil rights movement. I wanted to talk to someone intimate with that story.

Bakari Sellers: [00:14:33] Well, you know, Hannah. I'm a child of the movement. And I say that with a great deal of pride and humility.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:40] This is Bakari Sellers. He's a political commentator on CNN. He was the youngest African-American elected official in the nation and he is the author of the recent book My Vanishing Country.

Bakari Sellers: [00:14:52] My father got started. His activism was piqued at a very young age. He was 10 years old when young Emmett Till was brutally murdered and thrown in the bottom of the Mississippi River. And that picture went viral. You know, we're having this conversation about these images that we're seeing, of black bodies that have been killed and brutally lynched right before our eyes. And for him, it was Emmett Till in 1955. And it his mother had the strength to allow the world to see what hate, bigotry and racism had done to her son.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:23] Bacardi's father is Cleveland Sellers. He's a man who led sit ins in his hometown of Denmark, South Carolina. He went to Howard University, where he met prominent civil rights organizer Stokely Carmichael and later worked during Freedom Summer in 1964, when several hundred people went to Mississippi to help to register African-American voters.

Bakari Sellers: [00:15:47] And then he got a phone call that some of his friends had gone missing. And as we're talking about this word that comes up a lot now, allies, you know, I think about allies in history and I think about Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:05] Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney had come south for Freedom Summer. They were kidnapped and murdered on the project's first day. That's June 21st.

Bakari Sellers: [00:16:14] My father led search missions into Philadelphia, Mississippi, to look for their bodies. Their bodies were found behind the home of one of the local sheriff's deputies and ministers in the town, Edgar Ray Killen. And that was his first indoctrination, indoctrination into the movement. And then he became involved in the most deadly civil rights demonstration this country's ever seen.

Bakari Sellers: [00:16:33] On February 8th, 1968, they were protesting what the history books call the last vestige of discrimination. It was a small whites-only bowling alley in little Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Harry Floyd: [00:16:45] Mr. Floyd. Why have you not permitted Negroes to bowl at your bowling alley here in Orangeburg? Because I have my own customers that patronize me scripted to see. They support me year in and year out. I need no other.

Bakari Sellers: [00:17:02] And after they protested, they went they went back to their campus, I have to stress that fact they went back to their campus, they built huge bonfires and they can't foresee what would happen next. They didn't foresee that South Carolina state troopers would line up along the embankment in front of their campus. They didn't foresee that they would close ranks like they did, and they didn't foresee that they would have shotguns loaded with deadly buckshot and they didn't foresee they'd be turning on them with deadly intent. And it's eerie to talk about this now with the backdrop of everything that we have going on in this country today. But state troopers fired shots into the group of students and and killed three Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond and Delano Middleton. And they wounded my father.

Bakari Sellers: [00:17:44] And he was one of 28, was wounded and a little salt to injury when he got to the hospital. What else do you do to activists? That they arrested, they arrested him in Charleston with five felony counts.

Bakari Sellers: [00:17:55] All eight officers were charged. They were all tried. They were all found not guilty. And my father went to trial. They backdate his indictment from February 8th to February 6th. He was charged, tried and convicted of rioting. He became the first and only one man riot in the history of this country. But, you know, for me, it's the fact that that story isn't told or remembered that hurts more than anything we know about Kent State. But we don't know about Orangeburg.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:21] And, Nick, I have to admit to you, I did not know about Orangeburg until I read Bacardi's book.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:28] Yeah, no, me neither.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:29] And though the officers were acquitted, Cleveland Sellers served seven months in state prison. So I asked Bakari, coming from this deep history of protest, what he thought were some tools and necessities, civics, one to one listeners could use when and if they get involved.

Bakari Sellers: [00:18:50] I mean, the number one lesson of activism is you never ask for permission. You ask for forgiveness. And never forget, people were mad, you know, when we were protesting on airports and stopped in stopping traffic and people were like, man wanted to protest, you know, in a more considerate fashion. You know what? That's not the way protest works, man. I was having this conversation with my wife this morning. I was like, protest is messy. It always isn't supposed to make it supposed to make civil society uncomfortable. Go, go. Block a highway. All right, go. You know, go make sure people miss their flights, you know, be, you know, build unrest, but make sure it's nonviolent. But, you know, make sure you have that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:32] But before you write a sign and go outside, you have some work to do.

Bakari Sellers: [00:19:39] Throughout this time, you have to know why you're protesting. You have to know why you're getting involved. I guess if we're doing, you know, kind of a civics 101, I think the first step is trying to figure out why. Why is this purposeful? Why is this meaningful and why is this something that I should do? I don't want people who don't feel like this is necessary to get involved.

Bakari Sellers: [00:20:03] I mean, it's not if you don't feel like it's your struggle or you want to sit on the sideline, that's fine. You know, all black people didn't march for civil rights. You don't have to get involved. But for me, this is I don't believe that I can ever be free if we're not all free.

Bakari Sellers: [00:20:18] And so you have to find out your purpose, which is step one and then step two. You have to be intentional and purposeful.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:24] But what about your civil rights when you're protesting? Is there anything you need to know about what the police can and can't do?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:31] Bakari says that that's helpful to know. Yes, absolutely. But he stressed that that is not the most important factor here.

Bakari Sellers: [00:20:41] You should definitely know your rights, but you should also realize that it can go south really quickly with the mixture that we had in our streets today with the mixture of armed law enforcement and military and protesters. So my my I'm telling you all I have to say, when you protest, your number one goal should not be to give an officer a legal lesson on the streets. It should be to make it home safely. Knowing your rights is very important. Making it home safely is much more important.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:13] And I saw Bakari on CNN after the killing of George Floyd, and there's so much pain and anger and exhaustion. And he talked about having to have discussions about all of this with his black children. Did he say anything about this protest and the conversations we're having with our families?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:34] Yeah, he did. He had one specific question for all parents.

Bakari Sellers: [00:21:40] You know, are you are you loving my children the same way you love yours? Are you teaching them empathy? Are you teaching them to value our humanity? You know, those are the type of questions as as a country we hate. We've never really asked ourselves. In all of these before you hit the streets. Right. Like before you go out. These are questions you have to ask yourself first at home to prepare yourself to go out in the world to be a hero. For others, you have to be a hero at home first.

Bakari Sellers: [00:22:08]  You know, I'll write... One of the lessons my father taught me was that heroes walk among us. And I want to disabuse people of the notion that you have to be a superhero to be a leader. You can be a leader in your own community. You can be a leader in your own church, in your own precinct, in your own neighborhood, your own school, PTA, etc..

Bakari Sellers: [00:22:26] You know, right now in this country, you only have two choices. You can either be racist or anti-racist. It doesn't do you any good to sit at home and say, well, I'm not racist, but. You need to get out and be on the forefront pushing these things. And the leadership that's required right now is one of courage.

Bakari Sellers: [00:22:44] And I do recognize in one of the things we all have to recognize is that there's certain rooms where, Hannah, where you would be a better messenger than I. Right? Although we're coming with the same message, there'll be people who are more inclined or vice versa to listen to me versus listen to you. And we have to be courageous enough to speak to people who have preconceived notions, who are our friends, colleagues that we work with in family. And we have to be ready to confront them with some of the ignorant notions that they may present. That's the only way that we can begin to heal.

Nick Capodice: [00:23:18] Can you spell out what Bakari means by that?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:22] I think that what he means is that sometimes a white girl, which I am, is going to be listened to more closely or effectively than a black girl in a certain space. And part of being an entire racist means recognizing that and utilizing it.

[00:23:58]

Nick Capodice: [00:24:29] Today's episode is produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy with help from Jacqui Fulton and Felix Poon. Erica Janik is our executive producer and Maureen McMurray is director of Content. Music in the episode by Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions, Lee Rosevere, the Edvin Chamber Orchestra, Meyden and Asura. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR. New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The United States Postal Service

It’s the government on your doorstep — the only Executive Branch agency that visits every home in the country on a regular basis. So how does the USPS do it? And what happens when an agency this essential is in trouble? Our guests for this episode are Allison Marsh, history professor at the University of South Carolina and Kevin Kosar, a Vice President at R Street.

Episode Resources

Graphic organizer for this episode

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:09] Alright, Nick, I got a good one for you.

[00:00:12] We are gazing at North America from the stratosphere. OK, ya with me. Music swells and suddenly we zoom in on a newspaper in front of a suburban house. The homeowner steps out to pick it up on her way to the mailbox. But wait. Who's that coming down the street?

[00:00:30] It's her mail carrier coming to hand off some letters to her in person in the front yard of her house.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:40] I feel like you're pitching me the least dramatic movie that anyone has ever seen.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:44] It might seem that way at first, but it is dramatic. This is actually from a video that the Postal Service produced to show how it works, because when you really stop to think about it. A remarkable confluence of events had to occur [00:01:00] for that postal worker to be handing off a bunch of mail from various parts of the country, maybe even the world, to that lady in front of her very own house. It is a huge operation. And by the way, it's a government operation.

Archival: [00:01:18] When someone sends a letter, it enters a system already at work.

[00:01:23] But most people never get to see.

Allison Marsh: [00:01:29] I was interested in how does this government agencies deal with millions of letters and parcels every day and get them to the right person, you know, across a vast network.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:46] This is Allison Marsh.

Allison Marsh: [00:01:48] And I'm a history professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. And I was a former curator at the National Postal Museum.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:58] The United States Postal Service [00:02:00] is getting a lot of attention lately for being in financial jeopardy and tussling with a president who thinks that it should pull itself up by its own bootstraps. In order to understand how the USPS got to this point and to this kind of a relationship with the government, I needed to understand how and why this institution came to be, how it's even possible that there is a service that can and will deliver objects to every home in this country.

[00:02:28] So let's jump in. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:31] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:32] And this is Civics 101, a show about the basics of how our democracy works.

[00:02:37] And today...

Archival: [00:02:38] Let's go behind this wall and see some of the work the post office does.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:42] We're figuring out the mammoth creature that is the U.S. Postal Service, which, as it turns out, is a service that helps to make our democracy work.

[00:02:53] It's from the Constitution.

Allison Marsh: [00:02:58] This was something [00:03:00] that was written into our founding documents that you have the right to this service, that you have a trust. They guarantee your privacy.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:11] Right.The Constitution gives this power to Congress. Right, to establish post offices and post roads like a literal road designed to deliver mail.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:20] Yes, that is how important mail delivery was to the framers. They wrote it into the supreme law of the land.

Allison Marsh: [00:03:28] They also focused on the idea that you needed to have a network to move information for for the sake of democracy, that you were to be able to get the news to people up and down the East Coast.

[00:03:44] The idea that we need to have a functioning postal network to have a functioning democracy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:50] And it was about more than just moving mail around. Our Postal Service had this key feature. It wasn't going to open your mail.

Allison Marsh: [00:03:59] A postal [00:04:00] network existed in colonial North America prior to the establishment of the United States. But there were problems with it. And one of the key problem was the fact that the British Postal Service could open your letters and read them. And, you know, look for things like, I don't know, revolutionary materials.

[00:04:23] And so the idea of having a postal service that you could trust to maintain your privacy, it was something that the founding fathers really focused on.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:35] Wait hold on.

[00:04:37] The British government could just open your mail willy nilly?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:40] That they could in the U.S. first class mail that is mail for personal and business correspondence is pretty soundly protected, with very few exceptions. The government needs a warrant to open your mail.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:55] So our mail system kind of represents one of our earliest tenets of American democracy. [00:05:00] You have a right to information and privacy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:04] And these days it also means equity of access. The USPS is the only delivery service committed to reaching every home in America.

Archival: [00:05:13] The mail man knows everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knows the mail man.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:17] But it wasn't always that way. Initially, mail was only delivered from post office to post office. If you wanted to get your mail, you had to go to the local office and there was no residential delivery.

Allison Marsh: [00:05:29] This changed actually in the mid 19th century where they started having city free delivery.

[00:05:36] So that's when you have the first letter carriers where people would bring the mail directly to your house. And that was great. If you happen to live in a city was great. If you lived in rural America and in the mid 19th century, the majority of Americans lived in rural rural lifestyles. So we didn't get rural free delivery until [00:06:00] the beginning of the 20th century.

Archival: [00:06:02] Country delivery is called rural delivery. So the rural mail man's route is called an R d, route R and D are the first letters of rural delivery.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:15] Allison says that even when we did get rural delivery, it could be pretty uneven it was all about geography and terrain. In Manhattan, you might get your mail four times a day. But in rural Alaska. Maybe once a week or a month. But over time, the institution expanded wildly in order to provide greater convenience in connection to a nation's citizens, which I think is pretty radical.

[00:06:43] And it took a lot of innovation, like the postage stamp, for example.

Allison Marsh: [00:06:48] Initially, you would go to the post office and you would ask if you had any mail and you had to pay on delivery. So you could pay to pick up your mail. So [00:07:00] the invention of the stamp is the idea that you can prepay and your letter will get there.

Archival: [00:07:05] Meanwhile, Jimmy is buying a stamp for the letter. The money the post office gets for stamps helps pay for the people who work in the post office and for other costs of sending the mail.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:15] So before the stamp, the receiver had to pay to get their mail.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:19] Yeah. So the stamp was this incredibly simple but kind of ingenious way to pay for the mail.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:25] Quick aside, who designs stamps? By the way, as I was looking them up on the Web site and I saw they have a series on voices of the Harlem Renaissance and Arnold Palmer and a silver coffeepot.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:38] Yeah. So the Postal Service works with various art directors who work with professional artists. They design about 35 stamps each year. And the guidelines are basically the art has to be about positive stuff in American life and history. But that could be anything from like a positive event to a pretty flower. And if it's going to commemorate somebody, [00:08:00] that person needs to be deceased. OK. Moving on, another simple, clever thing.

Allison Marsh: [00:08:05] The invention of the mailbox is another thing. Mailboxes weren't required until 1960. Before that, you know, the letter carrier would actually knock on your door and say, hey, you have mail. And an efficiency study said that they there are losing up to two hours a day just knocking on people, stalkers. And so they're like, wow, we need to fix this.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:31] I love to imagine this room is full of post office executives that are brainstorming, like, what are we gonna do about this door-knocking problem? And suddenly someone stands up and like, he might sound a little crazy, but so crazy it just might work. Would if everyone put a little box outside of their house. And that's like how everyone in America gets a mailbox.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:53] Also, Nick, zip codes. Those are fairly new. They were invented by the USPS in the 1960s [00:09:00] to make delivery more efficient. Delivery by air was largely figured out by the post office. They also helped to pioneer optical character recognition. That is where it computer scams writing, including handwriting in order to sort the mail.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:17] So the answer to how the post office became an institution that delivers to every doorstep is that they spent about 200 years inventing clever ways to do it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:26] Right.

[00:09:26] The post office is a giant system that has enormous needs.

Allison Marsh: [00:09:33] Hey, something that you take for granted that you on the person to person basis, it seems, you know, a pen and a piece of paper that you hand to a person that then gets delivered. They don't realize how much technology is built into post office. And so it's a great combination of both the personal [00:10:00] and the individual person to person. Embedded in a highly complex technological system.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:15] All right. You mentioned at the top of the episode that the post office is having somewhat of a hard time these days, and you're describing what sounds like an institution that costs a lot of money to operate. So where does the money come from?

Kevin Kosar: [00:10:29] Yeah, the Postal Service is one of a handful of independent establishment of the executive branch, and it's one of perhaps a couple dozen government agencies that is self-funding.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:46] This is Kevin Kosar. He's vice president for research partnerships at the R Street Institute, which is a think tank in Washington, D.C. You might recognize him from our episode on the Federal Register. Welcome back, Kevin. So Kevin says the United States [00:11:00] Postal Service is part of the executive branch and that it is self funding. Right. But what does that mean?

Kevin Kosar: [00:11:07] That is, instead of each year Congress reaching into the Treasury and saying, here's your money, government agency, use it to do what we tell you to do. Instead, the Postal Service covers or is supposed to cover its operating costs through the sales of postage.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:21] Didn't you say earlier that Congress is in charge of establishing offices and roads for the USPS?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:26] I did. And to be clear, Congress does still have power over the post office, even though it's an independent agency of the executive branch.

Kevin Kosar: [00:11:35] Oh, yeah. If they wanted to pass a law saying the Postal Service is abolished, they could do it. The Constitution, as you note, Article one, Section eight says that Congress has the authority to establish post office roads. It says nothing more than that. So Congress has a really free hand to design the mail system. And if Congress decided one day we just don't need a mail system, it could just zero it out.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:00] But [00:12:00] it wasn't always this way. The United States post office is less than 50 years old. And by that I mean the independent office. It used to simply be the post office department of the executive branch.

Kevin Kosar: [00:12:12] It used to be just a standard government department, like a Department of Health and Human Services in 1970. That changed and it changed because the post office was breaking down. It was losing money. Its functionality was not good. It had terrible management, worker relations. There was a wildcat strike that actually shut down parts of the Postal Service while Nixon was president. And so they decided they needed a new model.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:43] A wildcat strike. By the way, means that unionized workers go on strike without authorization or approval from union leadership. And when that happened in 1970, Nixon deputized the National Guard to deliver the mail. It didn't work very well. And [00:13:00] the whole system was crippled, which was a major catalyst for Congress passing the Postal Reorganization Act. This struck the post office department from the president's cabinet, made it an independent agency like NASA or the CIA and took away the red tape and regulations, but also said that now had to cover its own costs.

[00:13:23] The hope there was that it would force the Postal Service to operate more efficiently.

Kevin Kosar: [00:13:26] And it did model work pretty darn well from 1970 until about 10 years ago. So when our economy took a huge hit in 2008. Mail volume plunged.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:37] Now, historically, drops in mail are temporary in recessions. But this time, things didn't really bounce back. More people and businesses moved to electronic communication.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:50] Right. It's much harder to self-fund if you've got less mail.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:53] And there's one more thing that is putting a strain on the USPS.

Kevin Kosar: [00:13:58] Our country, we have [00:14:00] more and more people with each passing year.

[00:14:02] And those people live in different places. And more addresses. And that just by its very nature, means that the Postal Service has a bigger and bigger job to do each year.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:14] So even though there's less mail, more packages, of course, but less mail, there's also more places to deliver to.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:21] Right. And the thing that says the U.S. Postal Service, apart from other delivery operations, is that they actually deliver to everybody. Companies like DHL, Amazon, FedEx, they contract with the Postal Service in order to make sure packages can get to areas where they don't deliver. Now, consider what that means when it comes to a time of crisis.

Kevin Kosar: [00:14:46] Remember back after the 9/11 attacks, we then had a series of packages with anthrax sent through the mails. That triggered a policy change and the Postal [00:15:00] Service. Under an agreement with a few other executive agencies like the Department of Defense, have an agreement that in the event of a national biohazard type attack at the Postal Service would be the vehicle for getting people the medicines they need to stay safe.

[00:15:23] They have that network.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:26] So the Postal Service is a kind of frontline responder when people across the nation need things.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:31] Yeah. And they deliver to every home. So in some cases, a postal carrier could be the only contact that an individual has. Especially in rural areas. So the USPS facing big financial trouble is a problem for everyone.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:46] With so many people and so many businesses who rely on them, what would happen theoretically if it went away?

Kevin Kosar: [00:16:01] There's [00:16:00] a lot of societies built on the post office, as we already mentioned. Private parcel delivery companies, they don't want to go to every single address and they hand off parcels and pay the postal service to carry them the final mile. There's a lot of people who to be cut off from the economy and face very formidable prices if they live in remote areas. Second reason, voting by mail. More than 20 million people got election materials and voted by mail. And we know in an age of COVID, that number is going to skyrocket.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:37] Right. Yes.

[00:16:38] I've been reading a lot about this in the news lately. During a pandemic, the presidential election could be completely dependent on the postal service, not to mention census documents, stimulus checks.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:50] Yeah. Which brings us back, I think, to the ways in which the Postal Service upholds this democratic system. There's been talk of privatizing the post office, [00:17:00] for example, you know, having it go fully independent, not a government agency at all. I asked Allison about this.

Allison Marsh: [00:17:07] Right now, the USPS is mandated that every single citizen pays these same rates.

[00:17:18] So it does not matter if you are in rural, you know, Montana or the Dakotas or Wyoming, you will pay the same price that someone in one of the big cities either killer will pay. Now, it does no cost the same for mail to be delivered in highly dense urban areas that it does in rural areas. So right now, the system is set up to subsidize the rural areas. And if we privatize that, will those Americans still have the same [00:18:00] access because it costs a lot more to go that last mile than it does to do the sort of nice city block?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:10] Here's the deal. Kevin says that it's really unlikely that the post office is going to be fully privatized.

Kevin Kosar: [00:18:17] And I can't remember finding a member of Congress who really believed we could privatize the Postal Service. Not all of our parts are on the same continent.

[00:18:30] You know? We have Hawaii out there. We have Puerto Rico. We have the Virgin Islands.

[00:18:34] And then nevermind trying to get mail up to Alaska and all the logistical challenges there. The idea that is somehow going to be easily handed over to the private sector and you're going to do it and turn a profit, I think is pretty fanciful.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:47] Well, what do you do then when you've got an essential government agency that is in serious trouble?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:51] This is where we stumble into another essential component of a functioning democracy. Compromise.

Kevin Kosar: [00:19:02] There's [00:19:00] going to have to be a conversation about how do you reform the Postal Service? They're going to have to cut a deal and it's going to have to do something to address the fact that the Postal Service's costs outstrip its revenues year after year.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:17] And I figure that the post office is going to see some major changes one way or another. Right.

[00:19:23] I just read that a new postmaster general was appointed by the USPS governing board, a supporter of President Trump, the first postmaster general in decades. That was not a career postal employee.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:34] Right. And also, of course, we are in a time when the president is questioning the future of the USPS.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:40] There's also a many billion dollar bailout filtering its way through Congress. So it's probably not going to come to a crashing halt or anything, but it seems like it may experience some serious growing pains in the coming years.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:54] Yeah, I think that's probably true. And I guess the important thing to remember amidst all of this [00:20:00] change and chaos is that the USPS is, if nothing else, an innovator. Right. It's figured out a lot of massive, impossible seeming situations. And importantly, it has managed to remain a beloved institution despite lots of setbacks. This is another thing I asked Alison about. Why if we send so much less mail, if we're all pretty much addicted to digital technologies, if this agency is struggling so much, why is this nation so committed to it? What is it about the mail?

Allison Marsh: [00:20:36] Throughout history, there has been both a love for the post office department as well as for the people who work for the postal system. And if you think about it, um, letter carrier is most likely the person that You [00:21:00] in the federal government that you have the most intimate relationship with in that you can see your letter carrier every single day. You might know his or her name. They might know, you know, your dog. They might check in on you. From the very beginning, the post office was likely the first federal building in any given town. And it was your link to the federal government. So it is what kept you in, you know, in touch not only with your friends and your family members, but with your is the only contact you may have had with the government. So I feel like that commitment is built on centuries of this trust and duty that works.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:53] The United States Postal Service is, despite massive shifts in organization and operation, an entity that is [00:22:00] as old as the country itself. It might have problems, but it's always been a problem solver, too.

[00:22:08] So what the USPS will be in the coming years remains to be seen, but it is probably going to figure out a way to be.

Archival: [00:22:31] So with our ever increasing volume of mail, we have some very serious problem that we are solving. We are making real progress. Welcome to your United States post office department.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:52] Today's episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Jackie Fulton. Erica Janik communicates exclusively [00:23:00] through letters written in an indecipherable shorthand, but we are going to figure it out one of these days. Maureen McMurray is the one who started the whole snail mail chain letter thing. Thanks a lot, Maureen. Music in this episode by Uncan, Asher Fulero, The Great North Sound Society, Jesse Gallagher, James Pants, Patrick Patrickios and you know you missed me. Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

AP US Government Prepisode

Starting next week, millions of American students are going to be taking their Advanced Placement exams from home. One of those is AP US Government and Politics. This exam is usually taken at school, but this year students are going to take a significantly modified test from home.

We talked to three teachers to find out what is taught in the course, the nine foundational documents that students are expected to know, and myriad tips and tricks for taking the exam.

This episode features the voices of Jenifer Hitchcock, Jim Kelly, and Ryan Werenka.

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.

Civics 101

Episode: AP US Government and Politics Prepisode

 [00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:04] All right Hannah, you there?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:07] I'm here.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:07] Alright. There are 15 million high school students in the U.S. and every single one of them is facing the challenges of learning from home. Every single school district is trying to figure out the best ways to teach them to support them and to grade them. SATs are on hold. ACTs are on hold as well. But days from us recording this, three point four million students are going to be taking a test that is not administered by their teacher. They're going to be taking one of the 38 AP Advanced Placement exams. They're gonna take from home. Online.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:45] And what is usually a three hour exam that students have preped year or at least a semester for is going to be 45 minutes. And one of those courses is AP U.S. Government and Politics. You and I have had the benefit of meeting [00:01:00] many, many wonderful AP gov teachers at conferences and events over the last few years. And I've always had this insatiable, almost morbid curiosity about this super challenging class. What's taught in it? What's the exam like?Could I pass it?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:16] Do you think you could?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:17] Oh, absolutely not.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:20] This is Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:22] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:23] And today we're doing a special episode on the AP U.S. Government Politics Exam with a focus on this year's take home test. Monday, May 11th, four p.m. Eastern. I spoke with three AP gov teachers who told me what the questions are like on it, the foundational documents that are required reading for the course, and finally, just some tips for taking it this year.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:45] Hold on before you get into this specific exam this year. What does Advanced Placement mean?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:53] Yeah sure! These are classes that you could take in high school that sort of roughly mirror an undergraduate college course. [00:02:00] They are, frankly, challenging. The exam at the end of the year is scored on a scale of one to five. And if you get a three or higher on it, you could earn college credit. This could save you money and time at college, an AP score can also help you apply to college. It could help you get a scholarship. But it is a depth of political study that I never had.

Ryan Werenka: [00:02:22] High school kids that are taking AP, U.S. government and politics class, mom or dad or whomever, you know, they have they're having dinner while we're, you know, social distancing and we're all cooped up, you know, and they start having these philosophical questions. Maybe they're watching the news. You know, these kids can chime in with the answers and say, well, no, actually, it says no. Constitution says this. My name is Ryan Werenka. I teach AP, U.S. government and politics at Troy High School in Troy, Michigan. And I'm excited to say that I was accepted to be an AP reader for this year. So I haven't read the exam yet. But I have taught AP, U.S. government and politics for many, [00:03:00] many, many years and have relationships with readers and have a pretty good understanding of what they're looking for.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:05] What are readers?

Nick Capodice: [00:03:07] These are several hundred teachers who read and score the exam. And since they teach their own classes, they are not given the test in advance as they could give their students a bit of an advantage. The questions on the exam are a big old secret.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:20] So how are they going to take the test this year?

Nick Capodice: [00:03:24] Well, in a non Corona world, students across America would normally sit for about three hours and take this exam and it had multiple choice sections and about four FRQs, which are free response questions, essays, basically. But that's not how it's gonna go down this year. Multiple choice is gone. It's going to be in its entirety two free response questions in 45 minutes.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:47] Two questions. What kind of questions?

Ryan Werenka: [00:03:50] Here's Ryan again.

Ryan Werenka: [00:03:52] Yep. So the first free response question is the the argument essay, and that'll be 60 percent of the exam. And then the second one is the concept application question, [00:04:00] and that will be 40 percent of the exam.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:03] Right. Take me through these. Let's start with that argument essay.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:07] You got it. As an example, here's last year's world. The United States Constitution establishes a federal system of government under federalism. Policymaking is shared between national and state governments. Over time, the powers of the national government have increased relative to those of the state governments. Develop an argument about whether the expanded powers of the national government benefits or hinders policymaking.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:28] Good Lord.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:29] Develop an argument. And the students have to use evidence from specific documents to back up their claim. And they explain why that evidence supports their thesis and respond to a hypothetical opposing perspective. I know I'm sounding wordy

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:43] Yeah, you kind of do. But at its core, these are not just skills for taking a test, right. These are massively helpful, critical thinking skills like make a claim. Back it up with evidence. Consider other sides to an argument.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:59] Yeah. If we could just. Do [00:05:00] this for everything.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:01] So what are the documents that they have to know?

Nick Capodice: [00:05:04] Ok. Here's Jim Kelly. He teaches AP Gov at Timberlane Regional High School here in New Hampshire.

Jim Kelly: [00:05:09] There are a list of than nine foundational documents the College Board gave all of us at the beginning of the year that we needed to focus on. Nine.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:16] Are you ready for this list, Frodo? Of the nine?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:18] That ring is not gonna throw itself into the volcano.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:21] Here we go.

Jim Kelly: [00:05:22] One, the Declaration of Independence.

[00:05:24] The Declaration will be a triumph. I tell you, a triumph.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:28] Of course, the greatest breakup letter ever written. An ordinance of secession. A master class in political philosophy.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:35] It didn't just create us. It laid the foundation for popular sovereignty. That is a term that means the government is created by people and its job is to serve those people.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:05:45] The declaration I mean, I see the declaration as a 'why'. I teach it as, you know, like it frames the Constitution. It tells us what animates us.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:54] This is the inimitable Jennifer Hitchcock, by the way. She teaches AP Gov at Thomas Jefferson High School for [00:06:00] Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. She is also a reader. She has dozens of wonderful online classes on YouTube. They are one of the best resources I have seen out there to prepare for the test.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:06:11] If we're thinking of like the essence of what it is to be in a democracy. And like, you know, I, I, I personally question to what extent are we a democracy? Like, that's my enduring question for life, just like, are we really.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:24] OK? On to number two.

Jim Kelly: [00:06:25] Two, the Articles of Confederation.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:27] Our first rule book.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:29] Yeah, our first constitution, and something frankly, we are thinking a lot about in the age of Corona, powers of the states and governors versus federal powers and presidential powers in times of an emergency. The Articles of Confederation gave enormous powers to the states with a very weak federal government.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:06:47] So I give the Articles short shrift.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:50] But that doesn't mean you have to.

Jim Kelly: [00:06:52] Three the Constitution of the United States.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:54] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:55] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:56] But if you're looking at the Constitution and you want to know what specifically [00:07:00] to focus on before you take the test, Jim had some advice.

Jim Kelly: [00:07:03] I strongly recommend going back into the constitutional clauses that I'm sure students have gone over with teachers if they haven't yet. You know, even just a quick Google search of most important or key constitutional clauses would be very important. Go through, review those and even make like to call them notes with clause and explanation of clause amendment, an explanation of amendment. Go right back through that. I think that's very important. Take a look at different actions that Congress takes different responsibilities of Congress. And, you know, just being clear that even though it seems like common sense, I don't think it's it's a bad idea to go back and brush up on some of those, like common sense concepts that you might know.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:46] I'm not going to make a joke about a sanity clause. So let's get on to number four.

Jim Kelly: [00:07:51] Four Federalist number 10.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:53] All right. We've got our first Federalist Paper. One of the 85 essays that are written to convince New York, and then later the whole [00:08:00] country that the Constitution should be ratified.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:03] Yes Fed Ten is one of the most famous ones. It is by James Madison and it is all about factions. That is the magic word. Factions. Large groups. They've got different interests. And the two big ones that he was referencing were property owners and non property owners,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:19] A.k.a. rich people and poor people.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:22] Yes. And this paper calms the fears of wealthy people that the non wealthy will make all the decisions because they're in the majority. Right. Because unless we give everyone the same exact amount of money, Madison says that factions are unavoidable. He says, "Liberty is to factions what air is to fire."If you're a free republic, it's going to happen. But the fact that there are several factions that compete, that's what's going to keep us clear of tyranny in the United States.

Jim Kelly: [00:08:53] Five, Brutus 1.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:55] OK. I have a vague sense of Brutus one but to be honest, I'm not super [00:09:00] familiar with it.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:01] Yeah, Brutus 1. All about it. I did not learn it in school. I had never read it. And it is wonderful. It is an anti-federalist paper. And the cool thing is it came out a few weeks before the first federalist paper. Brutus, which is a pseudonym of an anti federalist, he laid out all of the arguments for why the Constitution should not be ratified, said the federal government proposed within it was too powerful. The states were too weak. Brutus one is an argument for a confederation style of government, not a republic. And Brutus says that previous republics like Greece and Rome, they ended up in tyranny. So why should we try it here? And because it came out earlier. It's like a setup. It's like the setup for the spike of the Federalist Papers. Hamilton, Madison and Jay's 85 essays are a response. Eighty five responses to the concerns of Brutus.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:09:53] For me in particular, Brutus can go almost anywhere. And I think that [00:10:00] almost gets short shrift, like we talk so much about the Constitution. You know, Brutus opens the door to so many different routes. He opens the door to declaring that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perchance our founding fathers were elitists. He opens the door to, oh, my gosh, wouldn't it be great if we had participants, more participatory government? I almost use Brutus as an outline in my own class. My kids will go through and annotate. Here's his argument. And then we come back and say, what did the founding fathers say in response? Like what was, like each federalist paper is a response to Brutus. It's the cleanest, most comprehensive argument against the Constitution.

Jim Kelly: [00:10:41] Six Federalist number 51.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:44] I know this one. This is Madison again, this is the federalist paper that defends a government with separated powers consisting of three branches that check each other at every turn. It's the one where Madison says that if men were angels, [00:11:00] no government would be necessary.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:02] It is also about factions and the fear of an overpowerful majority. He says, quote, Society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals or the minority will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. I'll cut that.

Jim Kelly: [00:11:19] Seven. Federalist number 70.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:22] Finally, Alexander Hamilton comes out, right?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:27] Yes, we've had a lot of Madison now. But Hamilton's Federalist 70 is the one that supports a strong executive branch. Quote, Energy in the executive is the leading character in the definition of good government, end quote. And Hamilton argues for a unitary executive. That is that the president is in charge of the whole executive branch, the whole shebang. It prevents against legislative encroachments.

Jim Kelly: [00:11:51]  8, federalist number 78.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:54] This is your favorite.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:55] I do like this one. And it's Hamilton again, because it's about the powers of the judicial branch. Some [00:12:00] of Hamilton's points are that the judicial branch has, quote, no influence over either the sword or the purse, end quote. He argues that lifetime appointments of federal judges secure justice. And finally, in federalist 78, he outlines the process of judicial review that federal courts are the ones who should determine if laws are constitutional or not. This is a principle upheld in the delightful court case, Marbury v. Madison, 1803.

Jim Kelly: [00:12:27] And nine. Letter from Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:32] Letter from a Birmingham jail. Something written in the mid 20th century is a foundational document.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:39] I know, right? I was taught that document in English class, it was about like how to make an argument, not a civics class. Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested on April 12th, 1963, for parading without a permit in Birmingham. And a group of eight white clergymen from Alabama wrote a statement titled A Call for Unity. Letter from [00:13:00] a Birmingham jail is a response to that statement and his arrest. And it is a bedrock document for civil rights and for the idea of nonviolent protest. It is a foundational document because it lays out a reasoning and a process for the people to push back against unjust laws. There are dozens of excellent lines from it. Whenever you look for summaries on it every teacher says just read it. You just got to read the whole thing. One great line is, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed."

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:13:38] You know, it's funny, when they came out and said that they were going to put this onto their documents, I think a lot of people were flabbergasted and they saw it as a historical document or, ah, you know, a piece of rhetological argumentation. And I understand where they're coming from. But there are so many just amazing corners of that document that [00:14:00] I just want to sit in and think about. Once the kids see that, it allows them to walk into making connections with other groups, both then and now. You know, like I want to talk about how this connects to Black Lives Matter. I want to talk about how this connects to the Port Huron statement. I want to talk about how this connects to, you know, the environmental movement. Like, how are we using this as a way to delegitimize groups that are external to power structures.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:29] So I'm presuming that these students know these documents really well. By the time they take this test, can they, like, reference them? Can they have them out in front of them?

Nick Capodice: [00:14:40] In previous AP exams, you had to have that all memorized, it had to all be in your noodle. But due to the tests being taken at home, it is an open book test. You can have these documents at hand. However, Jenifer had some strongly worded advice about this.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:14:56] I know that I'm telling my own my own friends. My my [00:15:00] my best friends and education, my students this year that I want them to turn everything off, like don't have a cell phone out, don't have your books out. It's just it's a distraction. And you won't you won't be able to turn a corner in twenty five minutes with all of that stuff there. It really is just can you create a claim, give evidence that supports that claim and gives great commentary that will connect your evidence back to whatever position you've taken on the prompt.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:30] Those minutes are going to go by fast. Jennifer filmed herself taking a practice exam under the new rules for this year.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:15:36] I laughed on the camera last week, so I was like, it is way more stressful than it looks, especially like when you're doing it live. My handwriting fell apart. I mean, I was just like, oh, my God, everyone's judging everything that I'm saying. Like, they're like, that's not what that said. It's it it sounds a lot easier than it is.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:58] You do, though, want to have whatever notes [00:16:00] and outlines you yourself have prepared with you. That is a must.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:03] We talked a lot about the first essay here. Not much about the second. What is it called?

Nick Capodice: [00:16:08] It's a concept application question. It's 40 percent of your grade, 15 minutes.

Jim Kelly: [00:16:12] So the concept application question presents the students with an authentic scenario and assesses their ability to explain the effects of a political institution, behavior or process, and then transfer their understanding of course concepts and apply them in a new situation or scenario.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:29] For example, last year's concept application question was fascinating. It was about a hypothetical super conservative religious group and their constitutional rights regarding challenging part of a tax law. Ryan Werenka had some tips for this, which also can kind of apply to the argument question as well.

Ryan Werenka: [00:16:46] I think I picked up at a an AP teacher seminar was a little acronym that was APBS. It's not what you think, right? It stands for answer the prompt and be specific. You know, if we're [00:17:00] doing that, it's giving us a very specific thing. Let's make sure that our answer is relating back to what the prompt is asking us. And then provide specific information.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:08] APBS

Nick Capodice: [00:17:09] Answer the prompt. Be specific. Last year's essay about the religious group. The first question was describe in action Congress can take to address the concerns of the interest group in the scenario. So so Congress could pass a law. So describe it. Congress could pass a law reversing the Johnson amendment. Answer the prompt, be specific. Another handy acronym Ryan told me about is RSVP.

Ryan Werenka: [00:17:36] Where RSVP is, restate the language of the question in your answer and vanish the pronouns. They did this. Who did that? What? Make sure you... The Supreme Court decided this. Or James Madison wrote that. Or Alexander Hamilton was really bad at duels. I think those are the things that are going to help an AP reader to know this, that you know your stuff, that you know [00:18:00] your content and you know how to apply.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:18:02] One of the things that I see is that kids will use things like legislature a lot. Or courts. You as the writer have to do all the heavy lifting to show me that, you know, that the state legislatures are the ones who have the authority to redistrict and draw maps. If you say legislature, I have to do too much inference right. Like I'm like, which legislature? Because it ain't gonna be Congress. Pronouns are like the Devil's Playground. Just don't use them. Don't say he. Don't say she. Don't say they don't say it. Like repeat, repeat, repeat. Proper nouns are preferable. Active voice and past tense is preferable. Just clear crisp statements. Very factual statements. Short to the point. Get it done.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:47] Jennifer give me another tip on this one. Whenever you see the words original constitution.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:18:53] That is like a red flag, like red flag goes up and you should know immediately. We're talking 1789. [00:19:00] No constitutional amendments. You have to think about what the framers arguments were. Don't get bogged down on what we've what we've evolved to.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:10] And second and Jennifer framed this specifically as an equity issue because access to technology and Wi-Fi is a big problem in the country, especially now. But she said if you can take the test on a computer with the keyboard, if you don't have one, if you know someone who's got one, borrow it, write down the password to log into the computer on a piece of paper, leave nothing to chance. But if you can't. If you don't have access to computer, do your best on the phone. And also, if you prefer, students can write their answers on paper and upload photographs of them. But they're only given exactly five minutes to do that. So whatever your plan is, practice it beforehand. So you're not stressed out because one universal thing that all three teachers told me was not just good luck, but you've got this.

Ryan Werenka: [00:19:59] All the students [00:20:00] that are taking this on, I know this is a challenging time and a challenging class, and this certainly hasn't made things easier. But you guys are rock stars. You are are a good example for all of us. And I wish you the best of luck.

Jim Kelly: [00:20:12] We know how stressful this is. So we get it. But we also know that you guys are gonna do awesome on the exam this year and just go for it and do the best that you can.

Jenifer Hitchcock: [00:20:24] To all of my new friends who are taking this course with me. I wish you the very best of luck. And to my class of 2020, my Colonial's, my heart is with you as you sit down for this and you walk straight into the doors of where our future is trying to solve all of these issues with us, for us, all of those things.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:44] It is an intense class and it sounds like a really intense exam. Whether you take this test or not, these concepts and these documents would give anyone a fantastic education on [00:21:00] 'us.' America is about arguments. It's about discussions with evidence and rebelling and resisting and compromising and refusing to compromise.

[00:21:15] Yeah, we call our show the basics of how our democracy works. And I'm just grateful to have taken a peek behind the curtain of Civics 202.

[00:21:34] That’s that for today, this episode was produced by me, Nick Capodice, with you Hannah McCarthy thank you

H: Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton, who says soverignty is just a popularity contest

N: Erika Janik is our executive producer and could cut a three hour test into seven minutes

H: Maureen McMurray took her AP with a quill fashioned from a turkey feather and never stops talking about it

N: Music in this episode by Moore and Gardner doin’ this jaunty rag you hear right now, also by Uncan, Tone Ranger, Ikimashu Oi, Blue dot sessions, Broke for Free, gladrags, Inequalis, sara the illstrumentalist and the artist pick that’s never risky, Chris Zabriskie

H: Civics 101 is supported in part by the corporation for public broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire public radio

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Emergency Powers of the Governor

All fifty states and many tribes in the nation have issued emergency or major disaster declarations in the past weeks. State governors have been issuing orders, offering condolences and rallying cries and clashing with mayors and the President as they navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and attempt to keep their citizens and their economies safe. So what are a governor’s emergency powers? State and local government reporter Alan Greenblatt leads us through the how and why of those powers, and what they mean for the future.

Episode Resources and Lesson Plans

Graphic organizer for episode

The National Governor’s Association is the go-to for reliable information on the comings and goings and hows and whys of governors.

You can see the details of state and tribal declarations here on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s site.

Wondering about the other chief executive? Check out this guide to federal emergency powers here.

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors. 

Emergency Powers of the Governor

[00:00:00] Civics 101 is brought to you in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:08] Hi, all. Hannah here.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:09] Nick here.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:10] We hope you're all holding up out there. Here at the show, we've been leaning hard into responding to all of your wants and needs as best we can. And you know, when we first started Civics 101 way back in the day when it was a very different show, it was in part in response to a flood of questions we were getting at the station after the 2016 election.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:29] Yeah. And those questions included a lot of can this person do that? Is this addressed in the Constitution? How does that job work anyway? And unsurprisingly, those questions have resurged in a big way in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[00:00:44] John Raby, a history teacher at Thornton Academy in Maine, wanted to know whether governors have the constitutional authority to close their borders as governors across the nation continue to impose restrictive measures to stem the spread of COVID-19. [00:01:00] Is there a chance that one of them will just close the castle gates? And while we're at it, I figured we should understand how governors have the authority to do any of what they're doing right now. So I called up someone who knows.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:01:14] My name is Alan Greenblatt. I'm a reporter with Governing where I cover state local government issues.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:19] Governing is a news site and source on state and local government. Alan also happens to have written a textbook on state and local governance. And before we get to how governors are using their powers right now, let's get the role of governor out of the way.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:01:35] Well, governors are, of course, the lead political actors in their states and they set the agenda. So that takes a lot of different forms. It varies by state, of course. But governors generally have the first swing at setting the state budget. They typically set the legislative agenda. In general, they have a lot of appointed powers. They can hire cabinet secretaries [00:02:00] and the like, their commander, chief of the National Guard. And, you know, they can veto legislation and issue line item vetoes of a budget items.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:11] All right. So this is not dissimilar from the powers of the president. Right.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:14] Right. It's the chief executive of a state. Of course, each state has its own constitution, which is why gubernatorial powers will vary from state to state. Gubernatorial, by the way, means relating to a governor.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:28] But those formal powers are in times of relative normalcy in which we are currently definitely not.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:02:39] Yeah, of course. So I think every state now has an emergency operation center which comes into play, and so there's a certain command and control structure that is ready to go and the governors actually spend a good amount of time rehearsing for emergencies, which is one reason I think governors have stepped up so quickly during this Corona virus crisis.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:59] Hold. Hold it. Governors [00:03:00] rehearse for this, like for a play.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:03] Oh, yeah. Alan says that governors have plans for floods, hurricanes, even terrorist attacks. And they practice. They play out scenarios so that in the event of an actual emergency, they know that their plan could work in the current situation.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:03:21] I think every governor has declared a state of emergency.

[00:03:25] Let's just talk about the actual action of signing a merger declaration for a state of emergency in North Dakota.

Governor montage: [00:03:32] I am declaring a state of emergency to ensure that we are able to swiftly deploy the personnel and resources necessary to address coronavirus virus and where I have officially declared a declaration of emergency, which gives us certain powers.

[00:03:47] I am now issuing a state of emergency for our state of Alabama.

[00:03:53] I'm signing an executive order declaring a state of emergency in New Hampshire.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:03:56] Most of them, if not all of them, have requested a [00:04:00] federal disaster declaration which frees up different federal funds. It varies by state. Some governors are able to unilaterally declare an emergency. I think that's true in New Hampshire. There are other states where the legislature has given the governor emergency powers. For example, Georgia and Kansas, they've enacted legislation giving their governors new emergency powers.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:26] Ok. So the governor either has the power to declare an emergency or the legislature gives the governor that power. But this freeing up of federal funds. How does that work?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:37] Alan's referring to funds distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That's also called FEMA. If a state makes a disaster or emergency declaration, FEMA can then approve financial assistance for both individuals and communities to apply for. So if you go right now to FEMA.gov/disaster, you will find a list of states that have made that declaration [00:05:00] and whether their dollars have been approved, which at this point is all of them. And FEMA has approved all of them, too.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:07] But being in this state of emergency, though, what does it mean practically? It seems that governors are suddenly empowered to take drastic actions like they can shut down businesses and they can shut down schools.

[00:05:18] And before we get to the border stuff, is that legal?

Alan Greenblatt: [00:05:25] The powers are broad, so it's not specified. The governor may shut schools, they shut. Businesses may do this. Some things are specify, but basically it says any actions relevant to the public health and safety. So basically they have broad authority. So, you know, it's going to vary by the statute and probably by the court how expansive the powers are and what they can get away with. I mean, so far what we've seen is a move toward greater and greater restrictions.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:56] So basically, if it's done in the name of health and safety, [00:06:00] it can be done.

[00:06:02] But a state or a governor can always have their orders challenged in court.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:06:06] And your state, New Hampshire, there was a lawsuit last month challenging the governor's authority, whether he had the ability to limit large gatherings and therefore protests and things like that. And a judge ruled that it was within his authority.

[00:06:20] He could go under soon and you could shut down those large gatherings, given the emergency powers grading to the governor by by the state.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:28] All right. Well, while we're on the topic of New Hampshire, though, that makes me wonder how a governor chooses what to limit or shut down public schools, restaurants, of course. I get it. But in our state, for some reason, golf courses can stay open. What's up with that?

Alan Greenblatt: [00:06:43] I think, you know, if you're a governor, you are, of course, also concerned about the economy. Let's see arguments. They always bring up. They don't want to shut things down too fast or too much.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:56] But let's get on to John's big question, because ordering [00:07:00] businesses and schools to be shut down, asking residents to stay at home unless they need to pick up essentials, that's not the same thing as shutting down your border. Like on the national level, the border between Canada and the US is currently except for trade shut down. Nobody's going in or out either way.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:17] Right. And there are a number of things to consider when it comes to the constitutionality of shutting down state borders. I mean, first of all, it's unprecedented in the history of the United States. And several Supreme Court cases have referenced the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution. That is the one that prevents states from discriminating against the rights of people from other states. And the Articles of Confederation and determined that we have a constitutional right to travel between states, the Articles of Confederation, they drag that thing out of the closet. They sure did. And then there's the fact that it's Congress who has the constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, something that would certainly [00:08:00] be affected by a border closure. So it's also a question of who would shut down a state border. Would it be the state? Would it be Congress? Would it be the president?

Alan Greenblatt: [00:08:11] I don't know that we could have a national quarantine or shutdown order. The way we've had statewide stay at home borders.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:21] Alan basically said that this is a tricky question to answer. As you know, Nick, our most constitutionality questions and we should note in terms of constitutionality, that's something that a court would have to decide in the event of a challenge. So right now, the furthest that states have gone is mandatory quarantine orders.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:08:42] Rhode Island said that they were going to stop and ask for self isolation from people with New York license plates for fear that New Yorkers were spreading the disease. And Governor Cuomo, the governor of New York, complained, and Governor Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, [00:09:00] seemed to back off. And then she said, well, we're not going to single out New Yorkers were going to stop people with any out-of-state license plates. This has been a big concern. A lot of New England states and other places that have summer homes or vacation homes have been very wary about people coming in. I'm not sure that they could actually stop them. I haven't seen any state that's actually stopped people from coming in. What they've said, some of the southwestern states, for instance, are asking for people from New York or New Jersey or Connecticut to self-quarantine for 14 days. They're not blocking entry, but they're just putting this kind of public health provision on entering the state.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:40] And as far as a border closure order coming from somewhere else?

Donald Trump: [00:09:44] If you are from the New York metropolitan area and you travel elsewhere, we need you to self-quarantine for 14 days to help us contain the spread of the virus. I am now considering we'll make [00:10:00] a decision very quickly, very shortly, a quarantine because it's such a hot area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we'll be announcing that one way or the other fairly soon.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:16] There already was a federal quarantine order?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:19] Nope.

Andrew Cuomo: [00:10:20] I've been speaking to the president. This is would be a declaration of war on states. A federal declaration of war.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:28] That was Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. He basically said, I'm pretty sure that isn't legal at all. And it's a total violation of the constitution. And the president backed off immediately. The general consensus among constitutional experts right now is that even if a state border closure could happen, it could be ruled constitutional. A shutdown like that is so opposed to American ideals. It's just really highly unlikely to happen.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:56] You know, Hannah, this question is reminding me an awful [00:11:00] lot of a certain philosophical principle of which you are inordinately fond.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:04] Is it? Go on.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:05] This is federalism, right? This dance over the division of power between the states and the federal government. And even in this pandemic, cities and towns and individual citizens.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:17] Exactly. The president pushing buttons, the state pushing back. And the same is going on at the local level. Governors are giving orders. And cities, towns and people are pushing back. Like that lawsuit against the New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu that he ended up winning. I should mention, though, that it's just like how federal law beats state law. State law beats local regulation. If a city says close that beach. But the state says, nope, all beaches are open, that beach stays open.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:50] While we're talking federalism. I have just one last question. What are the chances that the strong powers claimed by governors in this time will [00:12:00] set a big precedent for even more strong gubernatorial powers later on, even after the pandemic is quieted?

Alan Greenblatt: [00:12:06] It's always possible once, once any political office when this presidency or the governorship gets new powers, they tend not to give it back. In this case, these emergency orders apply to certain timeframe of the legislature set a date or there's a time relevant to what HHS, the Federal Health and Human Services Department, has said.

[00:12:30] These powers won't last forever. So of course, it's possible there's a precedent. My guess is we won't really see too much of it that everyone recognizes that this is a true emergency. This is not a fake fake emergency. This is a true public health crisis.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:49] So like in all walks, we just keep our eyes on the horizon of normal life.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:53] In the meantime, maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that federalism persists even in the face [00:13:00] of crisis. And this is something that Alan actually pointed out just before we hopped off the video call.

Alan Greenblatt: [00:13:05] So you had different states respond differently, but you certainly had many states respond more aggressively than the federal government did, at least at the start. And so in the way our federal system may have been a blessing, if you had just one authority in charge and it chose to do nothing or do little. We'd be in worse shape than we are.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:26] State autonomy can mean strength and proactivity and innovation, and it can also mean disparities in the services and resources available to people just based on where they live. We're still those 50 little sovereigns in a single union.

Governor montage: [00:13:43] Connecticut's going to beat this virus by sticking together and sticking to the rules.

[00:13:47] Restrictions that I put in place were in order to require everybody flying back into Rhode Island from any domestic location to be quarantined for 14 [00:14:00] days.

[00:14:00] You for everything you're doing to ensure the health, safety and well-being of children all across Pennsylvania.

[00:14:07] We will get my priorities. Your governor is making sure that every Alabamian has access to accurate up to date information about about COVID-19, so that you can make decisions that will keep you and your family safely.

[00:14:22] Silver lining is beginning, just beginning to emerge in Colorado. The data is telling us the thanks to the actions we've taken and you've taken, we're starting to make progress.

[00:14:31] I want to encourage my fellow Georgians to hang in there. I know that you're tired of this. I know you want to return to business as usual, but we must first overcome the obstacles that we have in our path.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:48] Thanks to Alan Greenblatt for stepping in on very short notice to school, [00:15:00] me and gubernatorial emergency powers, among other things, you can find loads of coverage on state and local government in the time of Corona at governing.com, this episode was produced by me Hannah McCarthy with you, Nick Capodice and help from Jackie Fulton.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:13] Erika Janik is our executive producer and has issued an executive order to take a nap for once, for crying out loud.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:19] Maureen McMurry has shut down the borders between imagination and podcasting.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:23] Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Broke for Free and our friend Chris Zabriskie.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:28] Do you need a quickie episode on something that's been bugging you during this strange time, during any time, really? You can at us on Twitter, we're @civics101pod or submit a question at our web site.

[00:15:39] Civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:39] Civic 101 is production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

[00:15:57] Civics, 101 is supported in part by the Corporation [00:16:00] for Public Broadcasting.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

19th Amendment: Part 2

The Nineteenth Amendment was first introduced to Congress in 1878. It took over four decades of pleas, protests, petitions and speeches to finally get it ratified. We’re told that the Nineteenth granted all women the right to vote in America — but this was not the case in practice. How did the divides in the suffrage movement define the fight for women’s enfranchisement? And how did that amendment finally get passed? With a stern note from someone’s mom.

Our guests are once again historians Martha Jones of John Hopkins University, Laura Free of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Lisa Tetrault of Carnegie Mellon University.

Episode Resources and Lesson Plans

Graphic Organizer for episode

Around a hundred marchers were taken to the hospital from injuries sustained in the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade — learn more about the history of that event here.

Read Francis Ellen Watkins Harper’s remarkable “We Are All Bound Up Together” speech

Take a deep dive on the events surrounding the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the work that it left unfinished here.

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors. 

Nineteenth Amendment: Part 2

Adia Samba-Quee: Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101, the podcast about the basics of how our democracy works. Hannah McCarthy here.

Nick Capodice: Nick Capodice here too. We are about to dig into part two of a two-part episode on the 19th Amendment. If you haven't listened to Part 1, I recommend you hit pause on this. Go back and give it a listen. There's a whole lot of context in there that will make what you're about to hear actually makes sense. OK, that's all. Thanks for listening.

Our first episode on the 19th Amendment left us in this murky place. The 15th Amendment, the amendment that granted African-American [00:01:00] men the ostensible ability to vote had just been passed. Victory for American democracy, right? Except, well, not so as far as Susan B Anthony and friends were concerned.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, this really shocked me. It's part of the narrative that I had not been familiar with. This felt like the glass shattering moment because this whole swath of the women's suffrage movement breaks off to form a new organization that is in part opposed to the 15th Amendment.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, this is a political choice that Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton make. The argument is white women should get the vote before African-American men. So Anthony and Stanton break off and they form the National Women's Suffrage Association, dedicated to the defeat of the 15th Amendment, which feels so horrible.

Right. Especially when we're talking about a movement that did ultimately result in the 19th Amendment, which, [00:02:00] to be fair, is a good thing. I kept pushing this question during my interviews like Stanton and Anthony and a lot of their cohort were the awful racists. Right? So here's Laura Free, history professor at William and Hobart Smith College as an author of Suffrage Reconstructed.

Laura Free: I think we have to say, yes, these suffragists were racist in these moments and they were also important advocates for equality in America at certain times in their lives. So I view this as us, as a kind of. Yes. And approach to thinking about racism in the movement.

Nick Capodice: I know about. Yes, And. This is maybe our first improv reference in civics 101. You made a choice in a scene. I'm not going to say no. I'm going to affirm it and add to it.

Hannah McCarthy: Right, exactly.

So, yes, these women, they were racist and they helped a lot of women.

The other person that's really helping me think about it is Dr. Ibram Kendi, [00:03:00] who's a historian of American racism. And in his most recent book, How to Be an Anti-racist, Kendi argues that racist and anti-racist aren't identity positions, but their policy choices and their policy choices that people make over and over and over and again and again. And he even says you can flip back and forth between a racist position and an anti-racist position from moment to moment. And I think this is a really useful model for helping us to think about the suffragists, because Stanton throughout her life hops into and out of racist positions, supporting racist policies and ideas, and she hops into and supports anti-racist positions throughout her career.

Hannah McCarthy: Make no mistake, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B, Anthony, these women were political movers and shakers in gloves and white dresses and they made what they felt were politically expedient choices.

And sometimes these were really gross [00:04:00] choices.

Lisa Tetrault: I think one of the other things that makes it hard to grapple with these women is that we still have a double standard that we apply to female politicians.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Lisa Tetrault, history professor at Carnegie Mellon and author of The Myth of Seneca Falls.

Lisa Tetrault: Which is that they're supposed to be good and noble and pure, you know, and kind of worked for the broader good, whereas we know that men are, you know, selfish and conniving and, you know, domineering, you know, in these suffragists were those things, too. But partly because they're women and they were social activists, we think somehow they must be noble and pure. You know, how could they possibly have engaged in this kind of activism? And, you know, the thing is, people are complex and, you know, female political actors are just as complex as male political actors.

Hannah McCarthy: And let's just remember the fact that while many of these white activists broke off to form this anti 15th Amendment organization, African-American women activists are reveling and they are leveraging this moment in history for their own political empowerment.

Martha Jones: For African-American women, the 15th Amendment in many ways [00:05:00] is a watershed.

Hannah McCarthy: Our third guest here.

Martha Jones, history professor at Johns Hopkins and author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All.

Martha Jones: We know that black women, their families and their communities have already by 1870, when the amendment is ratified in their communities, black women have already been an important force during political deliberations. When black men get the vote in 1870 and they begin to go to the polls, we can recover stories of the black women who accompany them, whether they are in the air, the ears of men telling them how they should vote, or they are quite literally part of a community that is standing guard and ensuring the safety of men who are going [00:06:00] to vote for the first time.

Hannah McCarthy: And it wasn't just whispering in the ear of men who were going to vote as we think about the ways in which women like Stanton and Anthony were scrambling for political influence. Martha points out that it's important to remember that African-American women were doing the same thing in their church communities.

Martha Jones: And so we can see black women after 1870 in their church communities, in their church conferences, in their congregations, beginning to speak about rights, beginning to speak about the vote, beginning to call for their office holding.

And really transforming the equation, if you will, between gender and power in their churches on terms that very much mirror the political debates that we associate with the 15th Amendment.

Nick Capodice: This makes me wonder about African-American women, their relationship to the men and their community, [00:07:00] because there's this dual thinking about civil rights and women's political rights, like these women supported the 15th Amendment because it meant that half of their community was finally enfranchised and it gave them the opportunity to speak about their own vote.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, this is a really good point. Martha says that, you know, of course, African-American women had their share of foes within their own community. There's often still a divide between men, women. Right. But thinking of race and gender bias in the same breath allowed for this radical approach to equality.

Martha Jones: When these questions get debated, sometimes how it's put is --

So what distinguishes the black church and powerful men, along with powerful women, will argue that part of what distinguishes the black church is its longstanding rejection of man made, so-called man made [00:08:00] differences between human beings. Right. The black church should reject racism. That's not controversial, but perhaps also the black church should especially reject sexism because the argument goes both are not God given differences, but manmade differences in the black church can distinguish itself.

Hannah McCarthy: So we've got these parallel communities, some working alongside and in support of African-American men's enfranchisement. Some working opposed to it, both with the same goal, though, women's enfranchisement. It's a complicated web of activity.

And keep in mind, we're in the 1870s, right? We are still 50 years away from the passage of the 19th Amendment. Susan B, Anthony is in her 50s. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is getting into her 60s. Neither of these women who are at the forefront of the movement will live to see national women's suffrage. And we're going [00:09:00] to pass into a new generation of suffragists soon.

So does that mean we are also going to see some better ideas about race among suffragists? Does the younger generation ally with women of color?

Not exactly. Stanton and Anthony say that a really strong precedent. Here's Laura free again.

Laura Free: We see this in the way that those younger generation of suffragists treat women of color in the movement. The suffragists organize a big parade in Washington, D.C., which is their way of doing a march on Washington right?

Isola Dodic remembers the 1913 March on Washington:  The theory that you would say.

that Gable marched around the wall of Jericho seven times before seven times before it fell?

Isola Dodic interviewer: And you were going to knock that White House down if they didn't pass the suffrage act?

Isola Dodic remembers the 1913 March on Washington: Not the White House, it was the gate. It was to rouse the consciousness of President Wilson.

Laura Free: And the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago [00:10:00] is a group of very eminent African-American women activists, including Ida B Wells, the prominent anti-lynching advocate. And they ask for space in the parade to join this movement and the white suffrage. Just tell them yes, but you have to march at the back.

Hannah McCarthy: You can be a member of a super progressive movement that's about rights for people. Right. But that doesn't mean that power structures and racism and sexism can't bleed into that. And in fact, it often does. So this is the atmosphere in which women for the next four decades are tirelessly marching, lobbying Congress and working at the local level. Lisa mentioned at the beginning of our interview that 1920 this year that, quote, all women get the right to vote. That is kind of a falsehood. It's not just a falsehood because of the many ways that people of color were disenfranchised. It's also [00:11:00] a falsehood because women had the vote before that.

Lisa Tetrault: So to get women's suffrage, you have to go state by state by state. And there's this massive campaign that takes place at the state level that we almost forget about every time we follow the 19th Amendment.

And they have tons of victories. Like I said over the you know, by the 1910s, all of the Western states have have taken mail out of their constitutions and allowed women to start voting on same terms as men.

Nick Capodice: Women were voting in the US before the passage of the 19th Amendment?

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, women had the vote in New Jersey at the dawn of the American Revolution. I mean, they lost it before the passage of the 19th. But yeah, Wyoming gave women access to the polls in 1869 when it was still a territory and maintained the decision when it became a state. In fact, lots of states in the West gave women the right to vote before the passage of the 19th. African-American women were voting in New York, Illinois, [00:12:00] California all before its passage, which is a part of the story that's often left out. And I think kind of disempowers the women who won suffrage or partial suffrage over the course of this movement. Still, the passage of a federal amendment remained important even to the next generation of suffragists.

Lisa Tetrault: And then, you know the ratification story, don't you?

Hannah McCarthy: Do you?

Nick Capodice: No I don't. Hannah, do you, though?

Hannah McCarthy: Actually, I really didn't.

Lisa Tetrault: So they finally get it passed through Congress and then it has to go to the states for ratification. And two thirds of the state legislatures have to vote for it, which is, you know, a lot. And it also requires that some of the southern states, which did not allow women voting in any capacity, have to vote for it. And that was unheard of. It goes out to the states. It gets all the states it needs except one. It's short one. And no other state will take it up. And they just sit there for months with no like no progress. And it looks like it might fail. And then Tennessee takes it up.

Everyone [00:13:00] thought Tennessee would show its opposition in some ways. The governor called a special session of the legislature just to declare the up their opposition to the amendment. You know, it's people stream into the state. All the opponents stream men trying to sabotage the amendment. All the suffragists, three men trying to advocate for the amendment. You know, they're getting legislators drunk the night before. You know, I'm in the capital than the state houses. You know, just in a bedlam the night before the vote, the night before the vote, it looks like the no's have it. The vote is then taken the next day. And it seems pretty clear it's going to fail. And it goes around and everyone votes. It's a tie. And then a young man named Harry Burn, who was 23, the youngest member of the legislature, had gotten a letter from his mother in which she told him to vote for the ratification, quote -- and quote, Be a good boy. She tells him and he then changes his vote and votes for it. And without the tie is broken and it it clears to ratification with that one single vote.

Nick Capodice: Be [00:14:00] a good boy.

The 19th Amendment passed because a legislator was scolded by his mother?

Hannah McCarthy: Which I think is just the most perfect end to this long, sometimes bitter, sometimes ugly fight.

Be a good boy now. Give the women what they want. And finally, they do 1920.

The amendment is ratified. Written into the Constitution on August 26.

Nick Capodice: So circling back to where we started, August twenty sixth isn't necessarily the date we need to care about. Right. Like Lisa said at the beginning, it didn't start with Seneca Falls and it sure didn't end with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Lisa Tetrault: How do we get out of the 1848 to 1920 story? Right. When we look at black women's, because this is the point I was trying to make earlier, which is that there's two ways of thinking about race in the movement. One is trying to locate black women in the white [00:15:00] movement, and the other is just to look black women on their own terms. Right. And that's what Martha's doing. And that really blows open the 1848 to 1920 story. You know, it just it doesn't fit at all. You know, whereas locating black women in the white movement allows us to kind of have white women still define what the narrative is.

Hannah McCarthy: It doesn't fit at all. I told you that the point Martha Jones made at the end of my interview with her changed the way that I perceived approaching the 19th Amendment. The story of women and the vote is a much longer one. 1920 was just the beginning.

Martha Jones: If we treat that as the end, point us as storytellers and if we treat that is the end point we miss. What comes next and what comes next is as important as any chapter in the history of our democracy. When it comes to voting rights.

Nick Capodice: So the point is we can [00:16:00] tell the story of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which we kind of just did. But that is not the story of women's suffrage.

Hannah McCarthy:  Right.

The story of women's suffrage is a hundred plus year fight. There are decades of violent disenfranchisement of African-American men and women.

And it isn't until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that voting is really protected for most people in the country. And as I was wrapping up my interview with Laura Free, my last question for her was, OK. I was thinking back to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, this well-known African-American speaker, and she had this all bound up together speech that we talked about in part one where Harper says, yes, white women do need the right to vote so that they can educate themselves and better understand what African-American women are facing and better support them. And so I asked Laura free. Okay. So when in this long story did that happen? When did white [00:17:00] women educate themselves and support the African-American community?

Laura Free: Have we done so yet? Right. White women, it turns out, vote pretty much exactly like white men do. They vote on their economic and ethnic and religious interests. And there's not until I believe that the there certainly were white women involved in the civil rights movement. Don't get me wrong. And in the race, racial justice movements today, I think it's absolutely essential that white women own the racist past of our activist foremothers and work to use our privilege to advocate for the rights of others. That said, I don't think I don't think you could say that all white women now have gotten over that racist past and now support people of color.

Nick Capodice: So in other words, Hannah, [00:18:00] this isn't just one hundred years story. It's an ongoing story.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Talking about the 19th Amendment in particular really highlighted for me the fact that an amendment to the Constitution doesn't suddenly fix everything. Right. It's on us to make sure it's implemented in so many different ways. So I guess my final thought is go out there, get educated and bring the 19th Amendment to life.

Hannah McCarthy: This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with you, Nick Capodice,  and help from Jackie Fulton.

Nick Capodice: Erika Janik is our executive [00:19:00] producer and she has been telling the story of women's suffrage ever since we met.

Hannah McCarthy: Maureen McMurry holds a women's march every day just by getting out of bed in the morning.

Nick Capodice: Music in this episode by Chad Crouch, Ramzoid, Chris Zabriskie and Blue Dot Sessions.

Hannah McCarthy: There are resources, graphic organizers, transcripts and so, so much more at our Web site, civics101podcast.org. While you're there, don't forget to check out our brand new Learn from home page for all of you students and educators fighting the good fight from kitchen tables.

And our new Civic Shorts, fast and fun episodes for the younger set.

Nick Capodice: Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

19th Amendment: Part 1

The prominent figures and events of the women’s suffrage movement of the 19th and 20th centuries can feel almost mythical at times. That’s in part because they are, in fact, myths. The telling of the Nineteenth Amendment tends to stretch from a convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 to the amendment’s ratification in 1920, but the true story is a much longer one. We explore the myths and unveil the realities in part one of two episodes on the Nineteenth Amendment.

Our guests are historians Martha Jones of John Hopkins University, Laura Free of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Lisa Tetrault of Carnegie Mellon University.

Episode Resources and Lesson Plans

Graphic Organizer for episode

Ain’t I a Woman: Two competing narratives of Sojourner Truth’s speech by Teaching Tolerance

Centennial Craftivism: Make your own buttons and sashes!! From Humanities NY.

Black Women & the Suffrage Movement: 1848-1923

Have a civics question? Click here to ask and we’ll do our best to answer!

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TRANSCRIPT

Nineteenth Amendment Part 1

NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors. 

Hannah McCarthy: Hey, everyone, Hannah here. How are you doing out there? Nick and I are thinking about you constantly. We're a part of your community. If from afar. So please don't ever, ever hesitate to reach out to ask us about anything. Anything, not just civics at Nick knows a lot about old movies and board games. And I know a lot about decommissioned psychiatric hospitals. And Nancy Drew. Anything. E-mail us at Hannah@civics101podcast.org or Nick@civics101podcast.org. And we will answer you. And we love you. OK.

Nick Capodice: Yes. Please e-mail us. This is Nick here, by the way. Thank you for keeping Civics 101 in your lineup in this time. That is so strange for many of us. We're all watching right now to see how the government -- if the government works -- now more than ever, it is crucial for us to understand [00:01:00] our history, how we've navigated strife in the past, our missteps, our triumphs, and what systems have come out of that navigation. We'll be here every step of the way to give you the context that you need.

Hannah McCarthy: We also need to know what you need. So please let us know. We've posted a survey to our Web site, that's civics101podcast.org. It's right there on the landing page.

Hannah McCarthy: And we're asking how we can best serve you in this era of Corona virus. It's super short, super short. And we will take what we learned from you and make you and yours the very best episodes and resources to get us all through.

Nick Capodice: Alright. On to the episode.

Hannah McCarthy: There's this pretty powerful story that tends to go along with telling people how the 19th [00:02:00] Amendment came to be. It happens in a place called Seneca Falls, New York.

So here's the ad that was published in the Seneca County Courier, "A Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women will be held blah blah blah blah, uh, ladies only on day one. The public can come on the second day when... Okay, here we go.

When Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia and other ladies and gentlemen will address the convention.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Reenactor:  e hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.

Laura Free: If you go back to the Declaration of Sentiments, the document that was the foundation of the Women's Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, it sort of serves as a manifesto for the women's rights movement in the early 19th century, and there were lots of things they were asking for.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Laura Free. She's [00:03:00] an historian of voting rights.

Laura Free: I teach college students at Hobart and William Smith colleges in Geneva, New York. My most recent book was called Suffrage Reconstructed Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era.

Hannah McCarthy: She's also working on a podcast called Amended, which is tackling, coincidentally, the 19th Amendment, which is just a glint in the eye of all of these women at this convention at Seneca Falls. The Declaration of sentiments that Laura is talking about, that's this document written primarily by this woman named Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It's modeled after the Declaration of Independence. And it basically says that women should be on equal footing with men.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Reenactor: Let that be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her an alienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no voice.

Nick Capodice: And the 19th Amendment, just to clarify, this is the one that gave [00:04:00] voting rights to women.

Hannah McCarthy: Actually.

Can we just read it out? It's really short. Would you do the honors?

Nick Capodice: Sure. Sure. Here we go.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Hannah McCarthy: Right. You can't deny someone access to the polls based on sex. And Congress can make laws to enforce that right. This amendment was the result of decades of work on the part of the women's rights movement.

Laura Free: So people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B, Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone. These women had all been very much into expanding rights for women, things like property rights, the right to divorce, the right to have access to higher education, a very broad range of activities.

Hannah McCarthy: Suffrage, otherwise known as the right to vote, is one of these activities. And that's what women are ostensibly granted with the passage of the 19th [00:05:00] Amendment. It's ratified on August 18th, 1920, and written into the Constitution on August 26, 1920.

Nick Capodice: Wait, what do you mean by a sensibly grant?

Hannah McCarthy: As soon as I started to report on this episode, it became clear that the story we think we know isn't really the story of the 19th Amendment.

Martha Jones: I want to say I think it's very important from my vantage point that we not drop this story on August twenty sixth when we celebrate one hundred years of the 19th Amendment.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Martha Jones.

Martha Jones: And I am the Society of Black Alumni, presidential professor and a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. I'm a historian of the role that black Americans have played in American democracy.

Hannah McCarthy: I figured that making an episode about women's suffrage and the 19th Amendment [00:06:00] was going to be more complicated than the story of ladies in white dresses marching on Washington. Right. But it took Martha saying this for it all to click for me.

Martha Jones:  Because what begins on August twenty seventh, right.

Is that next chapter for black women? Right. That will drive all the way to 1965 in the Voting Rights Act. And if we'd stop at August 2016, 2020, we missed the opportunity to really place this next chapter. This chapter that black women really lead.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And today we are talking about the 19th Amendment, the long fight that preceded it and the long fight that followed. So long, in fact, that we need two episodes to tell this story. Women's [00:07:00] enfranchisement continued to be a struggle long after the American suffrage movement ended. The 19th Amendment isn't some singular event. It's a continuing principle that just like every other amendment, takes proactive enforcement. So this is a story about voting, but it's also a story about civil rights.

It's about race. It's about slavery. It's about the reasons why when we think 19th Amendment, we think Susan B, Anthony, we think Seneca Falls.

All right. The prevailing story about the 19th Amendment goes like this.

Lisa Tetrault: Oh, so we have a very clear set of outlines that start and finish the story.

This is Lisa Tetrault, author of The Myth of Seneca Falls. So what is the myth?

Lisa Tetrault: The 1848 women make the first claim for the vote, which is false. But that's the way the story is told.

Hannah McCarthy: In actual fact, women had been calling for enfranchisement and [00:08:00] empowerment and equal rights for a long time before this.

And that declaration of sentiments, that manifesto for the women's rights movement?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Reenactor: He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her sphere of action, one that belongs to her conscience and to God.

Lisa Tetrault: We elevate the declaration of sentiments simply because we have given so much credit to Seneca Falls. But that wasn't the first women's rights manifesto. Sarah and Angelina Grimke wrote women's rights manifestos. Mariah Stewart was write -- and a black woman, freed black women in the 1830s, was writing women's rights manifestos.

Hannah McCarthy: By the way, Nick, Martha told me that Stewart wasn't just politically active. She was the very first American woman to speak at a podium to a mixed audience about politics.

The very first.

Martha Jones:  And when we read the records of her speeches, when we read [00:09:00] the pamphlets that she published, what we discover is that she is already rethinking politics in what today we would call intersectional terms, which is to say she's already cognizant that she is an African-American woman labors under two burdens, racism and sexism.

All right. So I feel like Lisa and Martha are describing some radical women. So if these bold moves were being made by people like Mariah Stewart, like 15 years before Seneca Falls, why does everyone talk so much about Seneca Falls?

Hannah McCarthy: That's a great question. And I'm going to call that myth number two.

Lisa Tetrault: So it became to be curious to me as to how Seneca Falls won out as the vision for when at least this kind of strand of white women's organizing began and all the black women were there. But this wasn't always their preferred method of organizing.

And so I started wondering, like, where on earth did this story come from?

Hannah McCarthy: Lisa [00:10:00] told me that as she dug into this story, she discovered that it's not like people immediately happily fell in line behind women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They didn't become the names that we remember by default. They made that happen.

Lisa Tetrault: There were contests against their leadership and different organizations formed that were rivaling them.

And sort of arguing they weren't legitimate leaders anymore because of the racism and the anti black sentiments they were engaging in.

And so one of the things they do is start to tell this Seneca Falls story as a way to center their own leadership. So by centering the movement at the beginning, it's Seneca Falls. She really cuts out without resorting to outright exclusion, cuts out all of these other women and says, I am the movement. Right. I began the movement. Therefore, I am the movement.

Therefore, my my leadership is the most legitimate. And [00:11:00] through a variety of really complicated things, Susan B. Anthony, who wasn't there, even though a lot of people put her there, which is really the logic of the story they create.

Susan B. Anthony very quickly becomes associated with that event and will always carry the mantle of it, even though she was never there.

Nick Capodice: So not only is Seneca Falls not actually the start of the women's rights movement or the origin of the first women's rights manifesto. The lady who championed the story of Seneca Falls wasn't even there.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.

And we already know the icing on the mythological cake.

Lisa Tetrault: 1920 women win the vote, which is also false. And in between, a lot of white ladies who's mostly who we remember sort of march up and down and champion and fight valiantly and keep the cause alive and win voting rights for all women.

Nick Capodice: The question is then, Hannah, what is the real story about women's suffrage?

Martha Jones: I would begin the story of African-American women's suffrage in the earliest decades of the 19th centuries. That would be the 1820s [00:12:00] and the 1830s.

Hannah McCarthy: Here's Martha Jones again. She's about to publish a book, by the way, about this movement called Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All. And that story, she says, began way before Seneca Falls.

Martha Jones: This is a period in which we have growing really burgeoning communities of formerly enslaved people, principally in the north cities like Boston and New York, New Haven, Philadelphia, Baltimore have become really hubs for formerly enslaved people who are building communities within the building of institutions within the creation of those communities in debates inevitably arise about many things. But in particular, by the 1820s we see on the landscape recurring debates [00:13:00] about what roles women should play in that project, which is breathing meaning into freedom building institutions and the struggle for civil rights along with the anti-slavery struggles.

Hannah McCarthy: The fight for the abolition of slavery is very much bound up with the women's suffrage movement and women like Stanton and Anthony. They were abolitionists. But it was an entirely different thing for African American women to speak up for civil rights, especially during this time.

Martha Jones: It is a dangerous business for an African-American woman to step to the podium. Not only reputationally, but literally her own safety is at risk.

The term I've come to use is a movement for voting rights, and that is useful, I think, for appreciating the scope and [00:14:00] the scale of the political work that black women are doing from the 1820s forward.

We might say until today I say voting rights because they understand their quest for political power to be absolutely linked to the possibilities and the problems that African-American men confront as they strive for political power. For me, the term suffrage denotes a specific episode in the long story of the American story of voting rights. Suffrage is a movement largely led by and championed by white middle class women.

Nick Capodice: And were those white middle class women involved in that same fight? You said that [00:15:00] Susan B, Anthony was an abolitionist. Did she fight alongside the African-American community, like in the name of the African-American community?

Lisa Tetrault: These women had all been very much into expanding rights for women. But they also were interested in ending slavery in the United States. So during the Civil War, they agreed to help the Republican Party to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. And the 13th Amendment said that there can be no slavery or involuntary servitude in the United States.

Nick Capodice: But ending slavery is a different thing from campaigning for civil rights. Did the 14th and the 15th get the same support from people like Stanton and Anthony?

Hannah McCarthy: This is actually where things really start to fall apart. See, Laura told me that suffragists expected a kind of quid pro quo on the part of the Republican Party. Like we helped you to get this massive legislation passed. We helped you to abolish the institution [00:16:00] of slavery. And now it is time to give us what we want, which is women's rights, women's voting. But when Congress starts to debate the 14th and 15th amendments, they also start to consider ways to exclude women from these changes to the Constitution.

Laura Free: So Stanton and Anthony see that this is going on. They see that that gender is a problem. They see some of the early proposals. There are 70 different proposals for the text of the 14th Amendment. They see that in some of the early proposals, some people have included the word male. So they kind of freak out and they say to all their friends, we've got to stop this now.

Hannah McCarthy: At first, it seems like this could be a moment that will strengthen the activist community. We all pushed for abolition. Now we can all work together to make sure that Congress grants rights to African-American men and women.

Laura Free: But in May of 1866, Stanton and Anthony and [00:17:00] all of the people in their community who were activists and engaged in women's rights activism, they say, you know what? I think we need to create and what we would describe now as an intersectional movement. We need to be working for the equality of all people at this. At this moment. So they form what's called the American Equal Rights Association. And its goal was to, as Stanton put it, bury the black man and the woman in the citizen so that all women and men would be viewed as citizens rather than as a combination of gender and race identities. Right. So they attempt this alliance. They attempted an alliance operative word there at this meeting in '66. This is where Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who's probably one of the most well-known black writers at this time period. She's a poet. She's a novelist. She's also an incredible speaker. She [00:18:00] gets up and gives up some really interesting speech. And she says basically it's known as the all bound up together speech. And she says we're we're all bound up together. Here's her language. She says, You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. So her experience, she's saying as a woman of color in the United States is an experience of being wronged and that rights are important, but that she wants to rectify the wrongs, that the harms that are being done to women of color. She's like, I do not believe that white women are dewdrops just exhaled from the skies. Right. Like you delicate white women. And she says, too, that the white women of the country need the ballot in order to become better educated. She says if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America. And almost right away, [00:19:00] there starts to be tensions in this organization.

Nick Capodice: Harper is not mincing her words here. And I'm starting to suspect that these white women activists didn't really see their enfranchisement as a way to help women of color.

Hannah McCarthy: And unfortunately, things are just compounded by the debates going on in Congress about the language of the 14th and 15th amendments. Like in New York. They were having a constitutional convention, you know, where a state will decide whether or not to ratify a proposed amendment. Right. Here's the debate that was going on there.

Laura Free: So like one of the men in the debate says, black men need the right to vote because they're men. Women do not need the right to vote because they're not men. And that's a direct quote. It's just basically laying it bare.

Hannah McCarthy: And when Congress passes the 14th Amendment, it does, in fact, include [00:20:00] the word male when talking about apportionment and denying someone the ability to vote.

And when they pass the 15th, it does prohibit disenfranchisement based on race.

Lisa Tetrault: And only enfranchise as black men.

Hannah McCarthy: Here's Lisa again.

Lisa Tetrault: And Stanton and Anthony stand up and say we refuse. We refuse to support this amendment and the things that Stanton says are really cutting. She calls black men sambos, ignorant, she says that and she goes on to then rail against not just black men, but the immigrants.

And, you know, the kind of ignorant foreign vote and Chinese man. And she goes on and on and on and says, we cannot have these people, you know, these degraded people voting over educated white womanhood, refined, educated white womanhood. And, you know, it's just appalling.

I just want you to keep in mind Frederick Douglass, the famed African-American abolitionist and activist and formerly enslaved person. He was a friend of Susan B. Anthony [00:21:00] and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He was present at Seneca Falls. He also argued for women's enfranchisement.

Lisa Tetrault: Frederick Douglass stands up and says, you know, I can't believe that you're saying that you get to go first when we have campaigns of violence unleashed against our bodies in the south and in the north, and we are being hung from light posts and having our brains dashed out on the pavement. You know, this is a matter of life and death for us. And Stanton and Anthony say no and they bolt and they go form their own women's rights organization, their own woman suffrage association, the National Women's Suffrage Association, dedicated to the defeat of the 15th Amendment.

Nick Capodice: There were suffragists who actively opposed the 15th Amendment?

Hannah McCarthy: The best known suffragists actively opposed the 15th Amendment.

Lisa Tetrault: And then this is where the first talk of a federal amendment for women's suffrage comes from. And they say, well, the only thing that was good about the 15th Amendment is that it federalized suffrage.

Nick Capodice: So this major push towards the 19th Amendment starts in this [00:22:00] racist, ugly response to the 15th Amendment.

And basically, these women deny this real victory in enfranchising African-American men and grasp at anything about the 15th Amendment that will get them what they want.

Hannah McCarthy: You know, the facets of the women of the suffrage movement are many, and not all of them are gleaming. We do ultimately arrive at the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment, which is, by the way, a wonderful thing. But the way we finally got there says a lot about the women who led the movement. And it set the stage for a whole new era in the battle for enfranchisement. The winding story of the 19th Amendment continues in part 2 here on Civics 101.

Civics 101 was produced today by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff [00:23:00] includes Jackie Fulton. Erica Janik is our Executive Producer. She also fights for things in dresses, but they're multi-colored and she makes them herself. Maureen McMurray's daughters daughters will adore her. Well done, Sister Suffragette. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Doug Maxwell, Chris Zabriskie and Chad Crouch. There's so, so much more to see at civics101podcast.org. We are churning out educational materials and sniffing out resources like mad these days. And again, don't hesitate to tell us what you need, you parents and teachers alike. I'm hannah@civics101podcast.org, Nick's nick@civics101podcast.org. Email us, we'll answer you and we will find a way to get you what you need. Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Civics 101 Presents: Code Switch

We tend to produce our show irrespective of the news, giving you the basics of democracy so that you have context for whatever comes next. But lately, the whole world is talking and worrying and wondering about the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re going to lend what we can to that conversation.

There is a lot of information out there about the virus itself, how we think it spreads, what we can do to prevent it — so we want to give you the social context. When disease spreads, it often carries xenophobia with it. Today, Civics 101 shares an episode of NPR's Code Switch that investigates the racist ideas that flare up around epidemics and pandemics, especially those about Asians and Asian-Americans.

Our hosts are Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji.

Episode Resources and Lesson Plans

Vox on fear-mongering, mass hysteria and racism during a pandemic

The Conversation on how we haven’t learned much since the Black Death

Psychology Today on why xenophobia and disease have long gone hand-in-hand

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TRANSCRIPT

 NATALIE ESCOBAR, BYLINE: It's kind of bizarre, really. Asian Americans, as a whole, tend to be invisible historically, culturally and otherwise - until something like this happens.

REBECCA WEN: So a couple of weeks ago, I was organizing a birthday party for a friend.

ALLISON PARK: I was getting on the D.C. Metro.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I was having dinner at one of my regular restaurants.

DEVIN CABANILLA: My family and I - we were going out to lunch.

JANE HONG: I was walking with a colleague at lunch.

ROGER CHIANG: I was on the BART train for my morning commute to work.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Some guy at the bar, whom I had never seen before, said, do you have the corona?

CABANILLA: They told my wife and son to get away.

PARK: Get out of here. Go back to China.

SARA AALGAARD: People call us Corona. People ask us if we eat dogs.

WEN: And this kid said, well, you're Chinese, so you must have the coronavirus.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Coronavirus.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: It's probably coronavirus.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHIANG: The woman then replied that she isn't racist, but she just doesn't want to get sick.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GENE DEMBY, HOST:

You're listening to CODE SWITCH from NPR. I'm Gene Demby.

SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, HOST:

And I'm Shereen Marisol Meraji. The news about COVID-19, aka coronavirus, has been unsettling. And as the virus spreads, so does suspicion and harassment of Asian Americans.

DEMBY: And we have been here before in the United States because fear of disease and xenophobia have often gone hand in hand - or unwashed hand. SARS was associated with Chinese people. Ebola was associated with Africans.

ERIKA LEE: Irish as, you know, typhus carriers, or Jewish Italians and others from southern Eastern Europe as bringing tuberculosis and smallpox.

MERAJI: That's Erika Lee. She's a historian at the University of Minnesota and author of "America For Americans: A History Of Xenophobia In The United States."

LEE: Historians have pointed out that in times of epidemics like this, that existing prejudices, existing ideas about certain groups get medicalized. So it's no mistake that certain diseases get attached to immigrant groups that are the perceived threat of the time.

MERAJI: Groups like the Irish and Italians eventually folded into whiteness and are no longer considered a threat. Now, Italy has the highest rates of coronavirus deaths outside of China as of when we recorded this episode.

LEE: You know, I doubt that we're going to see the same types of exclusions or informal acts of discrimination targeting Italians or Italian restaurants or Italian communities in the same way that we're seeing this with China.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MERAJI: Professor Lee, welcome back to CODE SWITCH.

LEE: Thank you.

MERAJI: We heard from a lot of people from across the country who've experienced discrimination. They've experienced name-calling, bullying, you know, being told to cover their mouths and people walking away from them if they're Asian and they happen to sneeze - these kinds of things. And this has all been in the wake of the coronavirus news. What have you been hearing?

LEE: So I think there have been a number of incidents that I began to read about and hear about in January, most of them outside of the United States - restaurants in Vietnam putting signs on the outside of their doors barring Chinese people, a lot of so-called yellow peril rhetoric that was being circulated in French newspapers, the incident at UC Berkeley that was, I think, initiated by the Health Services that said - I think it was an Instagram post, and it essentially said that there may be very common responses to anxiety about the coronavirus, including xenophobia directed at Asians. And because of a backlash, that post was then deleted.

But then, of course, there are countless incidents similar to the ones that callers have just relayed of informal, as well as just explicit racism, assuming that because someone is Chinese- or Asian-appearing that they are carriers of this disease.

DEMBY: You've written that these fears have actually influenced American immigration policy. Tell us a little bit about that?

LEE: Some of them predate even, you know, Chinese immigration to the United States as part of a larger Oriental discourse of China and Asia being uncivilized, impoverished, unsanitary and, you know, crowded - you know, the teeming hordes of millions living in filth. And then, as Americans who traveled to China and then came back to the United States, they spread those ideas. And then as Chinese people started to migrate to the United States, those ideas became even more entrenched in popular culture, and then also in public policy.

So we know from the very beginning, as West Coast Americans and as Americans in general are starting to debate the so-called problem of Chinese immigration, they are explicitly tying China, Chinese people, Chinese spaces with disease and contagion. Historians have shown that the rhetoric is about Chinatown as plague spots, as cesspools of - laboratories of infection. And we see in congressional records how these ideas get part of the public record, part of American public policy. And they're used as justifications for immigration exclusion, as well as specific policies to try to deal with outbreaks of disease.

MERAJI: I can hear people listening to this possibly being like, OK, yes, all of this was way back in the day. But right now, I'm rightfully anxious about getting sick and my family getting sick. How does being anxious and cautious transform into xenophobia?

LEE: So there's much that we don't know about COVID-19, but many of the things that we do know about it is that it is spread through contact and through not washing your hands, you know, just like the flu. So we know (laughter) that as long as we can use those just commonsense precautions, we can protect ourselves against the virus.

What is happening in this current environment with - I know there's a lot of global anxiety. I know there's a lot of anxiety within the U.S., as we see in the news headlines, the number of cases being reported, the number of deaths being reported. Racist scapegoating and outright discrimination does not have to accompany this anxiety. It is an unfortunate sort of echo of the past, but it doesn't have to be. It would seem that we should have learned some of these lessons. As we talk about this history and know how unjustified these ideas were and how racist and discriminatory the policies were, they have been discredited in the past. And to see some of the same both informal and formal discrimination happening today is pretty discouraging.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DEMBY: After the break, we're going to get into more of this history with Professor Erika Lee.

MERAJI: And she'll tell us how she thinks the president's been handling things.

DEMBY: Oh, boy. Stay with us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DEMBY: Gene.

MERAJI: Shereen.

DEMBY: CODE SWITCH. And we're back with the historian and professor Erika Lee. And she was just telling us before the break about a bunch of the ways that Chinese Americans in particular have been singled out historically as conveyors of disease.

MERAJI: But there was another group I wanted to ask her about.

So you have a chapter in your book called Getting Rid of the Mexicans. And you also talk about how this is something that was used against Mexicans in the United States. You said that there was a near-hysterical campaign depicting Mexicans as dirty and diseased, carrying diseases like typhus, plague, smallpox. When was this, and what was going on at that time?

LEE: This campaign targeting Mexicans as an immigrant invasion but also as a racially inferior threat is happening (laughter) at the same time as the campaign targeting Chinese. And this is one of the ways in which xenophobia works. It uses an already-existing playbook. You know, certain immigrants are threats. They're threats because they bring crime, also because they take away jobs, but also because they bring disease. And they are sort of genetically carriers of disease.

So just in the same ways that American policymakers described Chinese and Chinese communities as places of filth and disease, lawmakers also described Mexican communities as, you know, places of laziness, of general squalor, of filth and disease. And when Mexican immigrants arrived across the border, they were routinely subjected to invasive, humiliating and harmful disinfecting baths using pesticides to rout out louse, but also (laughter) to cleanse, you know, Mexican peoples, their clothing and their baggage before entering the United States.

This is much harsher than what happened at Ellis Island, where European immigrants certainly faced scrutiny, but the medical exams were known as six-second physicals. They were pretty quick. So what's happening at the border is a reflection of the (laughter) idea that Mexican immigrants are a much greater threat.

DEMBY: Listening to your answer there, it reminds me of some of Shereen's reporting before on the language of vermin, as it pertains to immigrants, and sort of the dehumanization, as it pertains to immigrants to the United States. But it seemed like it also was actualized in policy - this idea that these people were almost like rats carrying bubonic plague. In fact, in 1900, the fear of bubonic plague among Chinese in San Francisco's Chinatown precipitated this quarantine of Chinatown. And they, like, disinfected the entire community. Could you tell us about what that process looked like?

LEE: Yeah. This idea that immigrants, but particularly Chinese immigrants, are vermin-infested - I think we see some of that rhetoric today, too. But it has really deep roots. And it is, in one way, very applicable to lots of immigrant groups. But there is a particular way in which it has been racialized with Chinese - Chinese as dog-eaters, as eaters of weird and strange animals, including rats and mice. There's a pretty famous 19th century advertisement for a rat poison that's called Rough on Rats, and the image of it is of a Chinaman - you know, a stereotypically drawn Chinese immigrant male in Chinese robes with a queue and, you know, sort of colorized deeply yellow - eating - like, literally about to bite into a full-grown rat. You know, so on the one hand, that message is, hey, the Chinese are (laughter) good exterminators of rats, and so is this poison. Buy this poison. But also, of course, is the message that the Chinese have these completely strange and uncivilized eating habits and that they - if they are eating and consuming rats that are known to spread disease, then Chinese people as a race (laughter) are also carriers of disease.

So that message is very clearly in the minds of officials in San Francisco when bubonic plague is discovered in 1900. It's about pointing the finger at Chinese people as carriers of the disease, rather than rats. So when the plague struck and the first instance was found in Chinatown, the city ordered an immediate quarantine of Chinatown with orders to remove all whites from the affected area. So (laughter) the white residents of San Francisco were ordered to leave Chinatown, but Chinese people could not. And the mayor of the time, James Phelan - he would become a national spokesman in the effort to exclude Japanese immigrants in about 20 years. He also warned that no Chinese people should be hired or allowed to work outside of Chinatown.

DEMBY: So we know that during the period in which many Chinese immigrants to the United States were coming to the U.S. through Angel Island, which is in San Francisco Bay, that Chinese immigrants were separated out, even from other Asian immigrants, for special inspection because they were seen as specifically carriers of disease. And I know that you are a descendant of immigrants from China who arrived through Angel Island, correct?

LEE: Yes.

DEMBY: Has your family ever told any stories about their experiences coming through Angel Island?

LEE: They never talked about their experiences coming through Angel Island, but because I'm a historian, (laughter) I found the records. And I found the records of my grandparents' interrogations - but especially pertinent to this conversation, my grandfather's medical exam. And it was nothing like anything I've read before.

Immigration officials ordered my grandfather to be subjected to the most invasive and humiliating medical exam that I've seen in hundreds of these records. So they had the medical doctor at Angel Island, you know, examine him for diseases, but also to measure every aspect of his body - his teeth, his genitals, his, you know, his height - to determine what age he was - to determine whether his claim of being 17 when he was immigrating was actually true. And they included just all of these detailed notes in the record. And it was just quite shocking to read.

DEMBY: Wow.

MERAJI: God.

DEMBY: There seems to be this paradox here, right? Like, on one hand, Chinese immigrants and Chinese people - Chinese people in America are held up as, like, model minorities, right?

LEE: Yeah.

DEMBY: Uniquely adept at assimilating to culture in the United States - the dominant culture in the United States. But there's also this latent sense that they're still much these very, like, dirty, backwards others - right? - who are sort of scheming and, as you said, disease-plagued. How do we make sense of both of those things sitting next to each other?

LEE: You know, one of the things about the model minority is that it's always been a very - it's always been a very complicated and complex stereotype. And that is, on the surface, they seem like they're the right kind of immigrant, the right kind of American, but you really can't know for sure. They may still hold allegiances to China, to Japan, to Korea. You know, they may not fully be assimilated as we think. And so there's this - scratch the surface, and you might reveal the real, true nature of the inscrutable Oriental who is actually not assimilated or who is really loyal to another country.

This is also a stereotype that goes way back. I was thinking about not just the ways in which these anti-Chinese stereotypes are so endemic to U.S. history, but how global they are. And I think that's another aspect of what we're seeing today - how easily weaponized certain stereotypes about Chinese are not only, you know, enduring across the decades and centuries, but also how they're globally understood.

As I was thinking about this, I remembered this just horribly racist book from Mexico that was published in the early 1920s. It was making the case for the restriction of Chinese immigration. And there's one cartoon - one illustration in it that's called "The Terrible Ills Of The Orient - Highly Contagious" (ph). And it shows Chinese people - Chinese immigrant men infected with syphilis, with trachoma, with leprosy. It's just really horribly drawn and very graphically drawn to see them as diseased and contagious. But the other part of the caption is that these Chinese people cover their diseases with very clean clothing when they work as waiters in cafes, as launderers or domestic servants.

DEMBY: Wow.

LEE: So they're spreaders of disease, but they cover it up really well.

DEMBY: Right.

MERAJI: Erika, I'd like to steer the conversation toward President Trump for a second. You wrote in an op-ed that he may be the most xenophobic president this country's ever seen. And I was wondering how you feel he's dealt with the coronavirus situation. Do you think he's been fanning the flames of xenophobia?

LEE: It certainly seems like he is. He's been reported as lumping in the virus as another failure of Democratic immigration policies that are allegedly allowing immigrants to overrun our borders. And so here, the message is that Democrats are also allowing disease-carrying immigrants to come to the United States and bring ruin and destruction.

And then there are other politicians who are feeding into a larger global anxiety about the so-called Rise of China, you know, not only as an economic competitor, but also as a competitor for world leadership and the Chinese government's alleged insidious plans to, you know, to steal secrets. And also, I think it was Senator Tom Cotton who alleged that coronavirus was, you know, formed or created in a lab by the Chinese government to explicitly cause harm to the United States and the world economy. These are - you know, these types of charges are part of a more recent discourse about China being malicious and deliberately threatening and a dangerous enemy to the United States.

MERAJI: At the beginning of your book, you said something like you were really surprised that Donald Trump's positions on immigration got him elected - or helped to get him elected. You were really unprepared for this United States of America, and that's what made you want to, like, dig into this history and understand it more. Do you feel differently heading into the 2020 election?

LEE: One of the things that I think is the most important aspect to remember about going into the 2020 elections is that Trump inherited these policies, these rhetorics from a long line of both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it's not going to be enough to simply reverse these executive orders, to undo what Trump has done. We know that migration, globally, is on the rise. We know how easily xenophobia is weaponized. It's going to take much more than just a new person in the White House to fully dismantle our xenophobic tradition.

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DEMBY: Erika Lee is the director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She's the author of "America For Americans: A History Of Xenophobia In The United States." Thank you so much, Erika.

LEE: Thank you.

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MERAJI: And that's our show. Please follow us on Twitter. We're @nprcodeswitch. And don't forget to wash your hands.

DEMBY: (Laughter) It's very important. Like, 20 seconds under hot water is very, very important. You can follow Shereen @RadioMirage. That's @RadioMirage, all one word. You can follow me @GeeDee215. That's G-E-E-D-E-E 215. We want to hear from you, of course, so you can email us at codeswitch@npr.org, and subscribe to the podcast on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.

MERAJI: And we wanted to thank all of the listeners who wrote in with their stories, the ones that called in and let us record their stories. You heard them at the beginning of this podcast. Thank you so much. This episode was produced by Jess Kung and Leah Donnella, with help from Natalie Escobar and our interns, Dianne Lugo and Isabella Rosario. It was edited by Leah.

DEMBY: And shoutout to the rest of the CODE SWITCH fam - Kumari Devarajan, Karen Grigsby Bates, LA Johnson and Steve Drummond. I'm Gene Demby.

MERAJI: And I'm Shereen Marisol Meraji.

DEMBY: Be easy, y'all.

MERAJI: Peace.

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