Americans in our day think “transparency” in government essential to its efficient and wholesome operation. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not entirely agree. They understood that secrecy encourages careful deliberation and compromise in the political arena.

Most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention understood how precariously their new nation stood together, and how important it was to deliberate and compromise during that fateful summer. Thankfully, the delegates established ground rules for communicating with each other that helped to ensure the success of their meeting. We could learn an important lesson from the founders when thinking about our Congress today.

Secrecy Rules at the Convention

One of the Convention’s first decisions was to adopt secrecy rules. The delegates agreed “that no copy be taken of any entry on the journal…and that nothing spoken in the [Convention] be printed, or otherwise published, or communicated without leave.”

has written, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention thought this was appropriate because it would promote deliberation and careful consideration of issues. As James Madison explained to Thomas Jefferson, the Convention thought secrecy would be “expedient in order to secure unbiased discussion within doors, and to prevent misconceptions and misconstructions without.” He wrote to James Monroe that the rule would “effectually secure the requisite freedom of discussion” and “save both the Convention and the Community from a thousand erroneous and perhaps mischievous reports.”

These remarks suggest that the delegates saw several critical benefits from a rule of secrecy during legislative debate. First, such a rule enables members to speak freely to each other while on the floor of the chamber. If members fear that their statements will be made public in order to turn public opinion against them, they will no longer discuss their ideas openly or seek to persuade each other. This would turn the whole meeting into a debating club, not a deliberative assembly.

Second, a public record can be manipulated by “mischievous” people to produce “misconceptions and misconstructions” in the public mind. The public may not read the journals and the debates, but they will read reports about them from people who can selectively quote those materials to distort what’s actually happening. To put it in today’s vernacular, reporters can take remarks “out of context” to turn the public against individual members and their proposals.

Later in his life, when reflecting on the secrecy rule, Madison described a third benefit. As he recollected, while the Convention was in debate, “the minds of the members were changing,” and if members had “committed themselves publicly at first, they would have afterwards supposed consistency required them to maintain their ground.” Keeping the deliberations secret, , ensured every member was “open to the force of argument” and able to change their minds freely. A secrecy rule allows representatives to listen to the arguments of others without being accused of “flip-flopping.”  

We do not know whether the Convention would have been successful without a secrecy rule, but it is clear that the delegates thought the rule essential. that “no Constitution would ever have been adopted by the convention if the debates had been public.”

The Moderate Approach of the Early Congress

The U.S. Congress took a moderate approach to secrecy in its early years, balancing the benefits of transparency and secrecy. While the Constitution mandates that “Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy,” these journals merely record actions taken rather than the entirety of floor debates. Since 1794, both the House and the Senate have been open to visitors who wish to watch debates from the galleries, and debates have been published in various outlets such as the Congressional Record (since 1873). However, much of the discussions in committee rooms, cloakrooms, and elsewhere were still private, preserving the benefits of secrecy.

Transparency “Reforms” in the 1970s

Reforms in the middle of the 1970s abandoned this balanced approach. The 1970s brought in a wave of new members who, in the words of one member, “.” In 1973 the House prohibited closed committee hearings (the Senate did so in 1975). In closed session, committees can hear expert testimony from and ask questions of expert witnesses, and consider their recommendations. When the doors are thrown open, members feel pressured to perform for the audience, seeking to embarrass the witnesses and other members of the committee.

Reformers also took advantage of a provision of the that allowed for public roll call voting. Prior to 1970, most of the votes cast in the House of Representatives were unrecorded, and thus essentially secret. Once these votes became public, members began to force “messaging” votes that were intended not to make law, but to put their political opponents “on record” for the next election. This practice has increased animosity, polarization, and vitriol in Congress.

The introduction of C-SPAN completed the transparency reforms of the 1970s. The network first began broadcasting House proceedings in 1979, and the Senate in 1986. It also covers most committee hearings. , the introduction of cameras has “turned all of Congress’ deliberative spaces into performative spaces, leaving less and less time for members to speak and work in private. The most obvious consequence of this transformation has been the explosion of grandstanding in both chambers.” Today’s committee hearings and floor debates in Congress are opportunities for members to score political points, or go viral on social media, but not to deliberate, persuade, or compromise with each other.

Recovering the Lesson from the Founders

Members are aware of the problems these transparency reforms have produced. One of them, a first-term member from North Carolina, . In his experience, he writes, “The same people who act like maniacs during the open [committee] meetings are suddenly calm and rational during the closed ones. Why? Because there aren’t any cameras in the closed meetings.”

Thankfully, there are still places where members can work together on lower-profile issues, where there isn’t enough controversy to attract media. () These places provide useful illustrations of the fact that, when they are given a little bit of space and secrecy to work together, people of different political views can still find common ground in this country on many issues.   Many Americans are frustrated with Congress’s inability to compromise or agree on anything. But they typically overlook the role that these transparency reforms have played in producing this outcome. The members of the Constitutional Convention would not have been surprised, and they would counsel us to let our elected officials talk more to each other and perform less for us.

Joseph Postell is Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College and a faculty member in the Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG) program at Ashland University. In MAHG, Postell often teaches courses on Political Parties and on the US Congress. During the 2024 summer residential program, he delivered the Sunday evening lecture, “After Party: The Roots of Congress’s Dysfunction.” He also edited TAH’s core document collection, Congress (2020). Postell studies American political institutions and their relationship to the modern administrative state. He is the author of  (University of Missouri Press, 2017) and coeditor of, among other volumes,  (with Steven F. Pittz). Professor Postell is an alumnus of Ashland University, where he was an Ashbrook Scholar.

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Thrailkill was a third-year teacher happily settled at Skyline High School in Mesa, AZ, when Lindblom phoned to ask her to apply for an opening at nearby Mountain View High. The request surprised and flattered Thrailkill. Not only was Mountain View the high school from which she’d graduated; Lindblom was a teacher she admired. While earning her Masters in secondary school education at Arizona State University, she’d observed Lindblom’s class. “That’s the teacher I want to be,” she’d thought. 

Lindblom’s “Defining America” Course

Thrailkill watched Lindblom teach a sophomore course she herself designed: “Defining America: The Fulfillment of the Promise of the Declaration of Independence.” Lindblom based it on a summer seminar she attended in the early 2000s: the Presidential Academy, a forerunner of °ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ąâ€™s current programs. The three-week program took teachers from across the country on a study tour of Philadelphia, Gettysburg, and Washington, DC, discussing with leading scholars three eras in history—the Founding, the Civil War, and the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights movement—all of which tested Americans’ commitment to their principles of liberty and equality. This inspired Lindblom to design an elective sophomore course on the same three periods, using many of the primary documents she’d studied in the TAH seminar. The course would prepare students for her fast-paced junior-level AP American History class. It would give them time to think about American principles while learning to read primary documents.

As Lindblom posed questions that pushed students to think through the readings, Thrailkill was reminded of her favorite undergraduate courses. A political science and philosophy double major at Arizona State University, Thrailkill learned about the American political system in large lecture halls. But small seminars on ethics and political philosophy stimulated her imagination and taught her to think critically. Lindblom’s teaching approach “was everything I wanted to do.”

How Lindblom Modeled Civil Discussion

She took the job at Mountain View. The next year she taught across the hall from Lindblom. Thrailkill watched Lindblom model civil discussion, disarming students’ fears of disagreeing with others. Increasingly reliant on cell-phone communication, today’s students often feel “anxious” when asked to debate historical or political questions, Thrailkill said. Teachers must model civil discussion. “Before challenging another person’s argument, you have to understand it. You must listen to what they say, then tell them what you heard, to verify that you understood.” This not only shows respect for the other person; it pushes you to carefully think through your own position. She found students learned this process best in small groups; afterwards, they more comfortably discussed issues with the whole class.

Lindblom, a 2011 , recommended that Thrailkill apply for the same grant, to fund a Masters emphasizing constitutional studies. She also recommended the Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG) at Ashland University as the ideal MA program for a working teacher interested in encouraging civil discussion of the perennial issues in American civic life. Thrailkill applied twice, and when she learned in May that she’d been awarded the grant for 2024, she felt Lindblom’s recommendation had made the difference. Looking through the Masters study options the Madison Foundation recommended, Thrailkill quickly concluded that Lindblom’s choice was the best.

Thrailkill’s First Impressions of MAHG

She registered for two courses in this year’s summer residential MAHG program. A study of Cherokee Indian removal during the 1830s would inform her on a part of history she knew little about. A second-week course on the American Founding would help her review what she’d learned as an undergraduate about the framing of the Constitution.

Teachers in the course on Cherokee history participated in a “Reacting to the Past” game, testing whether the discovery of gold on Cherokee lands make their forced displacement into the Arkansas territory inevitable. Each player acted the part of an actual historical figure or a composite of several, basing their actions on primary documents they’d read and discussed. Some played Cherokee nationalists, vowing to hold the land guaranteed them by federal treaties; some, white political leaders determined to force them off their land. Others played Cherokee leaders who thought the tribe’s survival depended on accepting removal. A fourth group represented Cherokee who were undecided. 
Most players made one or more speeches in character. Professor Jace Weaver assigned roles only after asking the teachers how comfortable they were with public speaking. Having begun college as a drama major, Thrailkill told Weaver, “I’m fine with any role you give me.” She got the role of Andrew Jackson, the historical character she most loves to hate. Presiding over a fictional meeting between representatives of the Cherokee and the white officials advocating their removal, she delivered a gracious speech of welcome that conceded none of the Cherokee claims.

The game illuminated the primary documents Thrailkill read to prepare for it. It helped her understand why Cherokee removal occurred, despite its evident injustice and the Supreme Court ruling in Worchester v. Georgia. Thrailkill now plans to use more role-playing exercises in her teaching. They make classroom debate “less risky. No one will judge you for taking Andrew Jackson’s side against the rights of Native Americans. You’re acting! Yet the exercise requires you to think about Jackson’s perspective.”

The course on the founding, taught by Professors David Alvis and Beth L’Arrivee, revealed the tense conversations that led to our constitutional framework. Delegates compromised without necessarily resolving their underlying differences. Thrailkill confided she’d “been feeling a little low lately about political efficacy.” Citizens seemed doubtful that they could make their voices heard in our polarized political climate. Given all that the founders achieved in the summer of 1787, Thrailkill “expected to come out of this course feeling a little more cynical” about current politics. “But now, I see that today’s debates reflect older ones.” The Antifederalists foresaw the elastic potential of the commerce and the “necessary and proper” clauses; our current debates over taxation and federal regulation reflect their worries. Yet the founders thought through their reasons for incorporating these and other more controversial provisions into the Constitution.

Building Students’ Political Efficacy

“I absolutely love MAHG,” Thrailkill said, impressed with the quality of the seminar conversations. The program will equip her for her life’s work of building students’ political efficacy. With the help of veteran teachers like Lindblom, Thrailkill is well positioned for the task. She advises Mountain View’s Model UN team; students on the team take her AP Comparative Government class. They study the governing systems in six nations: Mexico, whose system is modeled on that of the US; the United Kingdom, with a parliamentary system, and Nigeria, which is considering returning to such a system; the authoritarian systems in Russia and China; and the theocratic system in Iran. The team debates other teams in district, state, and sometimes national conventions. Thrailkill is constantly building the knowledge she needs for the course. She shared a shuttle ride from the airport to the Ashland campus with Henry Adeoye, a Houston-based, Nigerian-American teacher and Madison Fellow. Born to the Yoruba tribe, Adeoye engaged the Nigerian driver—an Igbo—in conversation about the differences between the Nigerian and American political systems. Thrailkill planned to tell her students about their conversation.  

During the 2022-2023 school year, Lindblom designed a new sophomore course — “Changemakers” — to teach civil discussion and build students’ political efficacy. Then she was offered the position of social studies curriculum advisor for the large Mesa Public School district. Lindblom asked Thrailkill to take on the class. Working with a veteran English Language Arts specialist (who also has become a mentor), Thrailkill implemented the double-unit course last year. It challenges students to think about how political and social reforms occur; teaches critical reading and media literacy skills; informs them on Constitutional protections for free speech; and teaches civil discussion through “structured academic controversies”—debates that require participants to restate their opponents’ arguments, conceding the strongest points, before responding. Students also select problems to research, investigating policy solutions and presenting their findings in a forum at year’s end.  “Nancie attended the forum and said we did well. A few days later I learned about the Madison fellowship,” Thrailkill said. “I’ve been blessed with brilliant and generous mentors. I feel like I won the teacher lottery!”

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Two well-known black and white photographs depict the struggle to end racial segregation in Southern schools that continued after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Less well known is the woman who organized and supported the brave actions of the Little Rock Nine: Daisy Bates.

The two black and white photographs are iconic images in modern U.S. history. The first photo shows a young black woman walking with school books cradled in her left arm. Sunglasses shield her eyes but can’t hide an expression that is grim, calm, determined. Behind her, a crowd of angry whites presses forward. At the forefront is a woman whose face contorts with hate as she hurls slurs at Elizabeth Eckford, who is trying to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 4, 1957. It was supposed to be the first day of school for her, and for eight other black students, all of whom had been promised admission to the school.

The second photograph was taken three weeks later. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be known, ascend the main staircase of Central High. They are guarded by helmeted troops from the U.S. Army’s 101^st Airborne Division. Many of the soldiers carry rifles fixed with bayonets. The armed escort finally made possible the students’ attendance, literally opening the doors for them.

Together, the photographs tell us much about an important historical moment. More than three years after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education case that racial segregation in education and “separate but equal” were unconstitutional, Elizabeth Eckford and her peers enrolled in the all-white Central High School. Fierce opposition to integration brought not just mobs of whites to the school grounds, but also state troops, who, under orders from Arkansas governor Orville Faubus, blocked the entry of the young African Americans. This flagrant defiance of constitutional order perturbed President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who dispatched troops to Little Rock to ensure compliance with the court’s decision. The images appear to neatly capture the dynamics and drama of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Children determined to receive a good education meet with anger and the menace of violence. Yet efforts to preserve white supremacy and segregation are no match for the law of the land, enforced by federal troops.

But the pictures don’t tell the whole story. Who were these brave young men and women? Who supported and inspired them? What happened to them after they started attending school? To answer these questions, we must look beyond the photographs and focus on a singular figure in the story of the Little Rock Nine, an African American woman named Daisy Bates. Her vision, leadership, and bravery made possible the integration of Central High School in 1957. Not only is Bates important to the history of Central High’s integration, she is also a significant figure in the national Civil Rights Movement. In recognition of her historical contributions, Arkansas selected Bates to be memorialized in .

Bates was born in November 1914 in a small town in southern Arkansas. White men murdered her mother when she was an infant and adoptive parents raised her. Learning what had happened to her birth mother engendered lifelong anger “about what has happened to my people,” as Bates shared in an interview. Yet on his deathbed her adoptive father counseled, “Hate can destroy you, Daisy. Don’t hate white people just because they’re white. If you hate, make it count for something.”

She made it count. After marrying, she moved with her husband L.C. Bates to Little Rock, where they put their life savings into starting a newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. Coverage of racially biased justice made them frequent targets of spurious arrests. In one instance, the Bateses were charged with contempt of court for an article they published. Daisy Bates also headed the state’s conference of NAACP branches, bringing further harassment. Undeterred, she emerged as a leader in the fight to integrate Little Rock’s schools after the Brown decision. When the white superintendent announced he would only admit one student (whose complexion was so light she could pass as white), Bates helped organize the Little Rock Nine. The students and their parents quickly came to rely on Bates, who had no children of her own, as a protector, spokeswoman, and problem-solver. Governor Faubus’s mobilization of state troops to block the students’ entry was just the first of many crises for her and the Little Rock Nine. The city’s White Citizens Council, formed to oppose integration, distributed handbills portraying her as a criminal because of the prior unjust detentions. The city council ordered her arrest for failing to provide detailed information about the NAACP branch’s membership and finances. She and her husband had to hire armed guards to protect their home. After President Eisenhower sent in the 101^st Airborne, Bates had to personally travel to the Little Rock Nine’s homes in the middle of the night to let the families know they could come to school.

Yet entry into Central High was far from the end of the integration struggle. The students faced unrelenting verbal abuse, and, in some cases, physical violence. School officials were eager to use any pretext to discipline the black students, which placed an extraordinary burden on them—even a modicum of self-defense or instinctive retaliation would be grounds for expulsion. Bates knew that if the students could not finish the academic year, not only would their bid to get an equal education be quashed, but also the national campaign to make the Brown decision a reality. As she wrote in her memoir, “Each day after school I sat with the embattled nine in the quiet basement of my home . . . these meetings were not unlike group therapy. In relating the day’s experiences, all the suppressed emotions within these children came tumbling out.” On one especially dangerous day, two of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown and Melba Pattillo, feared for their lives. Could they seek help from school officials? They didn’t dare try. “Let’s call Mrs. Bates,” Melba remembered saying. “Maybe she can talk to the army or reporters or the President.” Although Bates didn’t have a direct line to the president, the girl’s faith wasn’t misplaced. Every day, Bates was there for the Little Rock Nine. As the harassment intensified, she went to the school and demanded that stronger measures be taken against white offenders. When the school year ended in May 1955, eight of the nine had successfully completed their grade.

In his recent history of the modern Civil Rights Movement, historian Thomas E. Ricks that, like an effective military force, the Movement depended on self-discipline, “of putting one foot in front of the other, day after day, of keeping control of one’s own emotions and fears in order to serve a greater good.” Of course, strong leaders nurture self-discipline among their “troops” by modeling restraint as well as courage. For the Little Rock Nine, and the nation, Daisy Bates set that example. As the Chicago Defender reported, “If there had been no Daisy Bates there would have been no 101^st Airborne Division patrolling the halls at Central H.S. And no nine negro children in the once all-white high school.”

Professor David Krugler (University of Wisconsin, Platteville) is the author of (Cambridge University Press, 2015) as well as of two books on US policy during the Cold War. He edited TAH’s core document collection, The Cold War (2018), and has also written two World War II spy thrillers,  (2016) and  (2018), both published by Pegasus Crime.

Bibliography

Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock. New York: D. McKay, 1962; reprint, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986.

Interview with Daisy Bates. Southern Oral History Program Collection, October 11, 1976. Interview G-0009.

Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High. New York: Pocket Books, 1994.

Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976.

Poston, Ted. “A Woman Who Dared . . . Mrs. Daisy Bates.” Chicago Defender, December 4, 1957.

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Applications open soon for our Spring 2025 Multi Day Seminars! We are hosting seminars on a variety of topics in American history and politics. The application will be open September 9-29, 2024. Some of our topics include:

• Security, Self Determination, and Empire: The Grand Alliance, 1941-1945 at in New Orleans, LA.
• Controversy, Consensus, and Compromise in the American Founding, at   in Tuscon, AZ.
• The End of the Cold War and the Challenge of the Nineties at   in College Station, TX.
• Born Into Conflict: The United States and American Indians at in St. Augustine, FL.
• How Congress Began at   &   in Philadelphia, PA.
• Salem Witch Trials at in Salem, MA.
• Andrew Jackson at in Nashville, TN.
• Ellis Island: 19^th & Early 20^th Century Immigration at in Newark, NJ.

Each Multi-Day seminar runs for three days and brings together a small group of teachers from around the country. During the seminar, the teachers discuss primary documents on the seminar topic with the guidance of a scholar, who acts as the seminar leader. The seminar also includes a visit to a local historical site. See a sample itinerary here.

°ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ą hosts Multi-Day seminars at no cost to American history and government teachers. Meals, materials, double-occupancy rooms, and historical site visits are covered 100%. At the end of each course, teacher participants receive a letter of participation for 15 contact hours and a $600 stipend to help defray travel costs or other expenses. 

For more information about our Multi-Day seminars and to see the schedule of events please click here. Have more questions? Click here.

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While the work of civil rights activism was urgent throughout the Jim Crow South, Freedom Summer organizers recognized the Mississippi of 1964 as a distinctly heated place and time. Mississippi was the site of the most notorious lynching in the early civil rights movement, the killing of Emmett Till in 1955, and had the highest rates of lynching in the country — violence meant to impose social, economic, and political intimidation. Add to this violence the pervasive harassment of black residents, along with numerous formal acts of repression, and it is clear why activists deemed Mississippi a crucial, yet perilous, site for resistance. As organizer put it, “If we were going to fight for freedom, Mississippi was the test. You had to break Mississippi.”

The potential and peril of activism in Mississippi had been evident in the years leading up to 1964. Young Mississippians, organized and recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), participated in the . Concurrently, civil rights activists in Mississippi participated in a series of “Wade-Ins” to integrate public beaches, “Read-Ins” to desegregate public libraries, and “Pray-Ins” at all-white churches.  This ascendant energy, largely driven by students at historically black colleges like Tougaloo in Jackson, increased regional coverage of the movement and boosted momentum. And yet for many activists, the attention and momentum had not yet built to a level they felt suited the scale and urgency of the Mississippi challenge.

Then came the assassination of Medgar Evers, Field Secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, in June 1963 — the most high-profile murder of a civil rights activist to that date. This act, combined with murders of organizers who sought to register black Mississipians to vote, fortified activists’ resolve to democratize the state during the following summer.

Mississippi organizers knew that a project worthy of their ambitions would require a novel approach and greater scale of organizing than they had yet employed.  In 1961, the Mississippi chapters of the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE (in conjunction with other local groups) had begun coordinating voter outreach and registration efforts through an umbrella coalition, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). This alliance would be crucial to coordinating the 1964 Summer Project, resourcing institutional memory and best practices while also tapping into an established and committed grassroots network that operated out of churches, storefronts, community centers, and private homes throughout Mississippi’s black communities.

COFO organized intricate transportation and communication networks and recruited dedicated activists.  Organizations beyond Mississippi, such as the Northern Student Movement, responded, leading the national recruitment of college students for the Summer Project. They also collaborated with the (NCC) to coordinate training for these volunteers. The young volunteers were joined in Mississippi by over 250 NCC-sponsored clergy, along with hundreds of legal and healthcare professionals. Myriad organizations were aligned, focused, and mobilized to support COFO’s goals.

The most controversial strategy of the Summer Project was COFO’s decision to invite white students to participate. Critics both worried about the blowback from endangering white students and feared the repercussions of potentially reckless and ignorant white volunteers visiting Mississippi on what might amount to a glorified “service project” for them. Ultimately, the perspective of Bob Moses — a Harvard-educated math teacher and organizer from Harlem (and the man most identified with Freedom Summer’s field operation) won out. As Moses maintained, “These students bring the rest of the country with them. They’re from good schools and their parents are influential. The interest of the country is awakened and … the government responds.” Moses knew that activist efforts and the subsequent assaults that followed often struggled for recognition beyond the black press, and would gain a greater spotlight through interracial allyship. However, both critics and supporters of the invitation insisted that the Summer Project weed out applicants with any hint of ulterior or cynical agendas, and that field secretaries communicate to white volunteers, in no uncertain terms, the stakes of the Summer Project’s work.

Close experience of Mississippi’s struggles made the stakes of the Summer Project tragically, vividly, and starkly clear. Just one day after the first wave of white volunteers arrived to assist in voter mobilization, three volunteers already working on the ground — black Mississippian James Chaney and white New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — . COFO immediately contacted federal law enforcement and the national media to demand and publicize a manhunt. Movement pressure forced the FBI to open an office in Jackson that summer, and compelled Mississippi governor Paul B. Johnson to cooperate in the search as well. In the course of the investigation, and before discovering the bodies of the three civil rights workers six weeks later, law enforcement discovered eight more murdered young black men, whose disappearances had not been investigated. (Many of these victims still have not been identified decades later.)  Now no one could deny the peril of their summer mission. But the revelations strengthened the overwhelming majority of volunteers in their sense of purpose. Intentions matured into resolve.

While the Summer Project contained numerous facets, they were all united by the motif of freedom. In the Fall of 1963, black Mississippians had begun to refer to their political participation as “Freedom Votes” and by early 1964 were drawing local media attention to “Freedom Days” of voter registration. Summer Project workers lived and worked in rented or donated spaces that became known as “Freedom Houses.” Volunteers who came to Mississippi after the initial June wave often assisted the ongoing civic and practical education taking place in “Freedom Schools.” Permeating all of this work, in all of these spaces and beyond, were the “Freedom Songs” of joy, solidarity, and determination — expressions of collective purpose that acted as their own form of resistance.

The best known of these “freedom facets” is also the most immediately politically consequential one: the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Just as other parts of the Summer Project fought to democratize the citizenry, the MFDP fought to democratize the state’s dominant political institutions. While black voters in Great Migration cities had gravitated toward the Democratic Party during the New Deal, in the South the party had long been a bastion of unreconstructed Southerners and Jim Crow enforcers, with no black representation whatsoever in Mississippi. The Freedom Democrats mirrored the procedures of the state’s official Democratic Party as closely as possible — from paperwork, to precinct meetings, to delegation selection — with the crucial modification of making each of these processes open and inclusive, the goal being to  seat a more representative delegation as the official Mississippi Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that August.

Continuing to adhere scrupulously to party procedures, the MFDP arrived in Atlantic City intending to persuade the convention’s credentials committee that, as the only Mississippi delegates selected through an open and transparent process, they were the rightful representatives of the state’s best interests. They entered the convention with public sympathy on their side; the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman (murdered at the beginning of the Summer Project) were discovered two days before the convention’s start, refocusing national attention on the cause. And with the MFDP’s chosen lead petitioner to the credentials committee, Fannie Lou Hamer, they found a forceful appeal to hearts and minds. The most famous figure to rise to national attention during Freedom Summer, Hamer had been repeatedly terrorized and arrested for her activity in voter mobilization efforts.  In her speech at the DNC on August 22, she detailed abuses she and other activists had suffered before closing with a pointed :

 â€¦ if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Hamer’s speech further swayed public sympathy for the MFDP. While President Lyndon Johnson had been making significant steps in recognizing civil rights, including signing the CIvil Rights Act earlier in the summer, he feared the electoral consequences of supporting the MFDP. At his insistence, the DNC delayed a recognition vote (to cool the emotions Hamer aroused), then offered a compromise: the DNC would recognize two MFDP delegates (one black member, one white member) in a ceremonial capacity and promise larger structural change and greater inclusion at future conventions. The compromise satisfied neither the MFDP (who rejected it and continued to protest) nor the all-white official state party (all but a handful leaving in outrage).  Johnson’s political maneuvering on this front proved for naught: while he defeated Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in a landslide in the November general election, he ultimately lost Mississippi and four other Deep South states.

Many of the most impactful feats of activism demonstrate powerful combinations of protest and partnership, resistance and coordination. Freedom Summer shows how such cooperation bears fruit. The project drew on a vast network of interpersonal and organizational partnerships, involving a cast of thousands. The creativity, discipline, and courage of the participants galvanized future efforts in the civil rights and student movements. While Freedom Summer’s voter registration efforts ultimately fell short of organizational ambitions, it inspired future mobilization efforts in Mississippi and beyond.  It fed the momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Finally, its institutional challenge at the DNC precipitated changes in both the delegation practices and in the very composition of the Democratic Party.

ADDITIONAL WORKS CONSULTED

Biewen, John, host/producer. “Freedom Summer.” Scene On Radio. Season 4, Episode 7. Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University. April 2020. Podcast.

Dittmer, John.  Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press, 1995

“Freedom Summer, 1964.” History this Week. The History Channel. June 2020. Podcast.

“I Question America: 1963-1964.” . Jackson, MS. Visited on-site June 2024.

. SNCC Legacy Project. 2024.

Malik Ali, a James Madison Fellow and 2017 graduate of the Master of Arts in American History and Government program, is Tukman Distinguished Teacher of History at the Branson School in Ross, California.

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Because of , our students are aware of the world outside of North Dakota. A number of my students immigrated here with their families from places like Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Somalia. I ask them about their experiences; it helps to put American history and government into perspective for everyone in the class. At one time, I taught a class for English Language Learners (ELL) only. I tried to get their parents involved—I would tell students, on the first day of class: “Ask your parents to describe what government was like in the country you came from. How did the laws work there?” Many came back to class reporting that their parents fled their countries for religious reasons. For example, students from Nepal or Bhutan explained that their families had been promised religious tolerance by the government, then a new government took over and withdrew that tolerance. Other students’ families had gotten caught in the crossfire of tribal wars, because they belonged to neither side of the conflict.

Occasionally, if I stepped out of my classroom between periods, a fight would break out. Once I entered the room to find a tiny girl lifting her desk, preparing to hurl it at a boy. She had already thrown her shoes and books at him. I don’t know what he’d said to her, but I knew some of my students had grown up in refugee camps where boys had learned not to respect women. This girl probably had been abused. All the students were yelling, in their own languages, and I had no idea what anyone was saying. So, I began yelling at them in the bit of Norwegian I’d learned from my immigrant grandmother. Suddenly they stopped and looked at me, like, “What are you doing, Mr. Bisenius?” I said, “Well, I got your attention.” I sent the boy to the principal’s office and the girl to an ELL room where there were teachers who knew her well and could help her calm down, and then class began. . . .

. . . I hope students leave my classroom unafraid to ask questions—especially to ask “Why?”—the question I so often ask when they state their opinions. . . . Kids may get frustrated when I ask them “Why?”— but later, they appreciate it. A few years back, my family and I were out eating supper. Although I didn’t see him, a former student saw me in the restaurant and paid for our dinner. I wish I knew who that student was; I would love to thank him.

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2024 marks the 60^th time that Americans have gone to the polls to elect a new president. To support our teacher audience through the election, we created our Fall 2024 Saturday webinar series: American Political Rhetoric. Created to help American government and history teachers find connections between current and past presidential elections, this webinar series will cover topics like communication technology’s impact on political speech; the role of the president as both a political leader and the government’s chief executive; and the constant but evolving presence of America’s founding ideals in political rhetoric. 

Our webinars meet monthly on select Saturday mornings from 10.45am – 12pm ET. Background readings, a pre-webinar discussion board, and links to webinar recordings and relevant primary sources will be made available to registrants. Those who remain digitally present for the duration of the conversation will receive an attendance letter from °ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ą for 1.25 hours of professional development.

Register now for this free professional development by clicking on the links below!

·&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

·&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

·&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

·&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

·&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

Looking for Nonpartisan Primary Sources for your Classroom?

Check out °ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ąâ€™s core document volumes on Political Parties and the American Presidency

American Presidency covers not only the role of the executive branch in our constitutional order, but also the specific questions of presidential selection, term limits, and impeachment. Its documents also explore the president’s responsibility to oversee the executive branch and his authority as commander in chief and in regard to foreign policy.

Political Parties begins with James Madison’s commentary on the unavoidable but dangerous nature of parties and ends with the Supreme Court’s opinion expanding access to legitimate sources of funding for political party activities in Citizens United.

Want More Background on Controversial Elections?

From Bullets to Ballots: The Election of 1800 and the First Peaceful Transfer of Political Power recounts the contentious political history of the late 1790s and America’s first political realignment.  This concise history is perhaps the best account we have of the election of 1800.

Want to Broaden your Students’ Understanding of Election History?

°ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ąâ€™s exhibit, The Election of 1912, recounts the history of this three-way election with data, maps, images, historical essays and primary sources.

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The Impact and Limits of Judicial Power

The earliest case teachers discussed in the course—Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)—established the precedent of racially “separate but equal” public accommodations that was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), probably the most consequential Supreme Court ruling on education to date. After discussing Brown, teachers went on to discuss later, related cases. These ruled on the constitutionality of a number of complicated desegregation plans devised for large urban areas with segregated housing patterns. Professor Dunn’s first book, (2008), examines the 1995 case of Missouri v. Jenkins, in which the court found that a desegregation plan devised for Kansas City by a federal district court did little to improve the quality of education in the district and the racial isolation of the students despite spending over $2 billion. In the end, a coalition of black parents led an effort to take over the school board and end judicial supervision.  

As the above examples suggest, to study the court’s jurisprudence on education issues is to trace several threads in the country’s ongoing conversation over how best to achieve our national ideals of liberty and equality. But it is also to explore the limits of judicial power to achieve these ideals. To some extent, courts are equipped to rule on the intent behind educational policy—whether that intent accords with Constitutional guarantees of citizens’ rights. But they are not well equipped to judge which policies will best achieve the educational outcomes that one hopes would result from good intentions. As a result, court rulings on educational policy and practice may seem, to the public eye, to swing from one extreme to another, sometimes, for example, upholding school busing to achieve racial integration and sometimes forbidding it. This happens because the public tends to focus on the hated expedient—busing—to achieve an end such as equal education for all, instead of focusing on the desired outcome, which is hard even for educational experts to guarantee or measure.

First Amendment Freedoms in Schools

Another set of recent cases the course examined involved the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. This was the theme of the most recent cases the teachers read. ., decided in 2021, upheld a student’s right to free speech outside of school hours and off of the school campus. Two cases, both decided in June 2022, concerned religious establishment and free religious expression in the educational context. In , the majority ruled that a state-funded tuition voucher program in Maine could be used to finance children’s education in religious schools without violating the Establishment Clause and that refusing to do so while funding vouchers for nonreligious schools violated the Free Exercise Clause. In the majority ruled that the firing of a football coach who led players in voluntary prayer on the football field following games violated the coach’s right to free religious expression.

Several earlier cases covered in the course involving First Amendment freedoms might seem, to the casual observer, to have upheld opposite perspectives. Earlier cases involving religious establishment took positions unfavorable to educational policies influenced by the religious motives of the policymakers. These included (1968), which overturned an Arkansas state law prohibiting the teaching of human evolutionary theory, and (1987), which invalidated a later Louisiana state law requiring that the teaching of human evolutionary  theory be accompanied by instruction in the theory of “creation science.” In these cases, the court reasoned that the laws were made to propagate the lawmakers’ religious agendas. A case bearing on students’ free speech rights, (1986), upheld the suspension of a student who used vulgar and offensive language in a speech he made at a school assembly. But in this case, the critical fact was that the student used offensive language on school property and during a school-sponsored event. The court reasoned that it is proper for schools to uphold standards of civil speech during school activities. Teaching students to use civil speech is part of the public schools’ overall mission to teach responsible citizenship.

Lively But Respectful Discussions

Dunn asked each teacher enrolled in the course to “brief” two of the cases covered in the course. For each briefing, teachers prepared a two-page summary explaining the historical background of the case; lower court rulings on it; the arguments presented when the case reached the Supreme Court; the legal question central to the case; and the court’s decision, along with the reasoning in the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions. Teachers proved themselves adept at locating justices’ most incisive and telling commentary. Then they opened the class discussion of the case, asking questions that related the case to others they had discussed.

Lively but respectful discussions occurred when teachers from different parts of the country with differing cultural expectations disagreed on the soundness of the majority opinions. For example, a teacher from New Jersey briefed a case involving books removed from school libraries, (1982). In its opinion, the court ruled that a school board could not ban books it deemed offensive from school libraries.

One teacher from Utah wondered whether, instead of speaking of “banned” books, one should speak of “curated collections” of books. Was it not the school’s responsibility to decide which books were of greatest educational value? If students wanted to read books outside this collection, they might find them in the local public library. The teacher from New Jersey objected to this view, arguing that in the case of students with limited transportation options, school libraries provided their only access to books that fell outside of the school culture’s norms. Other teachers wondered if it depended on the nature of the material found offensive. Did a book deemed objectionable contain gratuitous sex or violence? Or did it simply depict social problems that some find it uncomfortable to consider?

Conflicting Opinions, Yet Far-reaching Consequences

Despite the limits of judicial power to achieve desired results, the teachers in the course concluded that the judiciary’s involvement in education has far-reaching consequences. This occurs even when the Court’s decisions in a given era appear inconsistent. Confusion over the court’s actual position can lead to “defensive teaching,” or the avoidance of topics and reading selections that could provoke parental disapproval and possibly lead to legal challenges. Teachers afraid of this may steer an unnecessarily wide path around painful history that needs to be discussed. Examining cases involving teacher dismissals helped clarify the issues that teachers taking the course really needed to worry about.

Several government teachers looked forward to sharing with their students what they were learning about landmark court cases involving education. A teacher from Arizona planned to ask students in his government class to analyze and discuss the justices’ often conflicting opinions. He felt he could encourage lively but respectful discussions like those in the MAHG class, “if we stick to the constitutional issues.”

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Brennan, a frequent participant in °ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ą seminars, has long promoted civic education and civil cooperation at the local and state level. For nearly two decades, he served on the city council of Parma, Ohio’s 7^th-largest city. His service included a decade as the at-large elected Parma Council President, a role in which he chaired council deliberations. He carried on this work while teaching government and an elective course in constitutional, civil and criminal law at Brecksville-Broadview High School. “Being on the Council furnished endless lessons for my classes,” he said. At the same time, Brennan’s teaching work allowed him to share the views of a younger generation with the older citizens of Parma.

In 2020, Brennan began bringing local naturalization ceremonies into the high school. He wanted students to understand the careful process through which immigrants become citizens. He involved students in planning school assemblies during which new citizens publicly pledged, as is customary, to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same” and to perform military or other service when the law so requires.  Prior to the pledge, the school choir sang, a film celebrating the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island was shown, and prominent local citizens from immigrant families gave speeches about their own experience of becoming American. Before these assemblies, “some students didn’t even know what naturalization was! Now they will never forget,” Brennan said.

These events typify Brennan’s creative approach to public service. As a legislator and educator, he’s spent his career reaching across generational, ethnic, religious, and partisan lines to carry out projects that serve the whole community. He’s often worked with private charities on such projects. A runner, he led in the creation of the annual , which raises money for local scholarships and an all-faith food pantry. As a teacher, he appreciated °ÄĂĹÁůşĎ˛ĘżŞ˝±Ö±˛Ąâ€™s free seminars featuring scholar-led discussion of primary documents. In his teaching he used only primary documents, knowing from his city council experience that they “are the materials you deal with when you are trying to solve political and social problems.” Now, as a full-time legislator, he is “working hard to build trust with my colleagues and to honorably serve the people to the best of my ability.”

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In case you didn’t know about the narrative histories, let me describe them, before I explain them. There will be six:

• Discovery and Settlement      
• The Founding, 1789–1800ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý      
• Civil War, 1850–1876
• The Emergence of Modern America, 1880–1920ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
• The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929–1939
• America in the Age of the Vietnam War, 1960–1980ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý  

Each volume covers a critical period in American history (are there any periods that weren’t?). The subtitle of each is “A Concise History,” because that is what each will be. John Moser’s history of the Great Depression and the New Deal, the only one published so far, is 145 pages. In that brief space, John narrates what happened in the ten years he covers. He tells the story of the economic crisis that followed the stock market crash of 1929, the efforts of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt to address it, and the economic and political changes wrought in the United States by Roosevelt’s New Deal. In doing so, he reviews the various interpretations offered by the participants in the events he narrates and those who subsequently studied them. In all of this, his narrative is tied to and helps readers understand the 43 primary documents in The New Deal and the Great Depression: Core Documents that John also edited.

But why does TAH offer John’s narrative (and the others), if primary documents are so important?

The idea for the narrative histories came from the experience of teaching the MAHG course on the American Revolution. Several teachers who took the course mentioned that Gordon Wood’s short volume , which was part of the assigned reading, was helpful to them because they did not have an overview of the period and Wood’s book provided it. Talking to them it, we realized that by an “overview” they meant at least three things.

First, they meant a chronology of events, a clear statement of what happened before and after a specific primary document. The chronology helps in understanding the significance of the document, why it was written and what effects it may have helped produce. For example, John’s documentary history contains two documents on the relationship of African Americans to the New Deal. Both provide insight into specific aspects of black life during the depression. John’s narrative places what those documents tell us in the longer-term movement of black voters from the Republican party to the Democratic party. This movement has had a significant effect on American political life ever since. John’s narrative helps us understand why those two primary documents were written. It helps us look forward to the post World War II civil rights movement, even though Roosevelt himself was for political reasons guarded in his dealings with the issue of black civil rights.

Second, the author of a primary document is always aware of more about his current circumstances than a reader many years later will be. As the New Deal continued, for example, Roosevelt was quite aware of his critics, but he did not necessarily even mention them, let alone describe their criticisms accurately or fairly in detail in his speeches. John’s documentary history of the Depression and New Deal includes some of the critics, of course, but his narrative account gives all of them, including extremists of the left and right, due consideration. In doing so, he allows us to better judge FDR’s political maneuvering to deal with them. Ultimately, the context John provides allows us to weigh the argument that the New Deal saved democratic capitalism rather than undermined it.

Finally, as the second reason for the narrative histories suggests, the narrative and the documents work together and allow us to question each more thoroughly. Readers who work through the primary documents will be able to question John’s narrative, just as reading the narrative will allow them to return to the documents with the knowledge they need to better question and evaluate what each author says.

This process of reciprocal questioning is like what happens or should happen in the discussions we have in our MAHG classes and in our one day and multiday seminars.

As these reasons suggest, the narrative and the documentary histories are meant to work together to deepen our understanding of the period they treat. To that end, each narrative history includes a chronology and an appendix that lists by chapter the primary documents from the corresponding documentary history discussed in that chapter. Each of the narrative histories, with the exception of the Founding, will be written by the editor of the corresponding core document collection. The next two to appear (both in the 2024-25 academic year) are The Emergence of Modern America and America in the Age of the Vietnam War.

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