Well, this is certainly more heady than the "cats or dogs?" Weekend Assignment, isn't it? How delicious!
Well, as a communications major at Penn State, my favorite course without questions was my first Comm Law class. Why? It dealt almost exclusively with the first amendment. I really sank my teeth into that class, and felt like I was ready to go and become a lawyer myself. Obviously that didn't happen. But I still love the first amendment, and I love to argue it with people (especially my second amendment husband).
However, for this assignment, I chose to share someone who USED the first amendment to fight for other amendments: Susan B. Anthony. This woman dedicated much of her life to speaking out publicly against the status quo. She fought for equal wages for female teachers, she fought for the rights of former slaves, and of course, for female suffrage. She started a weekly journal, The Revolution, which "was to promote women's and African Americans’ right to suffrage, but it also discussed issues of equal pay for equal work, more liberal divorce laws, and the church’s position on women's issues."She's the kind of person I wish we had more of today.
She was also arrested for voting in the 1872 Presidential election, and gave her most famous speech during her 1873 trial. Here's an excerpt:
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.
However, her defense was all for naught. The judge, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt, explicitly instructed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury, delivered an opinion he had written before trial had even begun, and on June 18, 1873, sentenced her to pay a $100 fine. Anthony responded, "May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty." She never did pay the fine, and the government never pursued her for nonpayment. (this last paragraph copied directly from Wikipedia)
So that's the story of Susan B. Anthony. I know I learned a lot about her this morning.
Extra Credit: A favorite controversial book (it doesn't have to be from an American). Gee... a controversial book? I have read a lot of banned books, but none that I think were truly controversial. Instead, I would like to offer my favorite first amendment quote, from the movie The American President:
America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".
2 comments:
Wow. Great post! Every timeI stop by your blog, you have something really interesting to say. If you're not on my sidebar already, you're about to be.
I've never researched Susan B. Anthony, so I didn't know the scope of her advocacy. Good speech, too! And shame on that judge. That's not the way the law is supposed to work.
By the way, my favorite course when I went back to college was Business Law. Had it not been wildly inpractical to embark on all that extra schooling at an impoverished 47 years old, and my aversion to confrontation, I might have switched to studying law instead of accounting.
maybe it's just that law, in the context of something you're really interested in, is interesting.
I probably would have died of boredom in a business law class!
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