Discuss & Debate: First Amendment

In the graphic novel March, Congressman John Lewis documents his experiences as a young civil rights activist. Hear him describe his first arrest employing a nonviolent resistance strategy, as captured in the book.

Between December 1936 and February 1937, auto industry laborers in Flint, Mich., stopped working and occupied the GM factories that employed them until their right to unionize was recognized.

This 1915 cartoon by Henry Mayer depicts the struggle for women’s suffrage.

In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined four fundamental human freedoms—the freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear—for the United States and the rest of the world.

Hailey Woldt describes being a part of a research team that traveled to 75 cities and visited 100 mosques as part of a study on Muslims living in a post-9/11 America. In Brooklyn, a ten-year-old boy tells of being beaten, prevented from practicing his religion in peace and called a terroist.

Protesting the death of Alton Sterling and the Baton Rough Police Department’s request for Black Lives Matter demonstrators to clear roadways, Iesha Evans stands in the middle of a street as two Louisiana state troopers, dressed in riot gear, approach to arrest her.

Committed to promoting tolerance and the right to "receive and impart information," the OSCE reaffirms the need to report hate crimes on the Internet. Among other suggestions, the OSCE recommends that states review their laws regarding Internet hate speech.

This photograph from the Associated Press shows Martin Luther King Jr. in a crowd of people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.

The announcement on November 20, 1969 from 89 American Indians – mostly students from colleges and universities – that they were taking over Alcatraz Island, set in motion what would become the longest occupation of a federal facility by Native Americans to date. This report aired a year later on NBC News, in December 1970, six months before the occupation ended.

Lewis Diuguid recounts how The Million Man March was an important moment for the African-American community, with black men marching together in Washington, D.C. and in other cities across the country.

This essay details James Reeb’s calling to become a minister and—eventually—to join the march in Selma. Although he was tragically murdered following the march, his death had a profound impact on the civil rights movement.

In this essay, Lecia J. Brooks reacts to the rioting in Baltimore by reflecting on her experiences following the Rodney King verdict in 1992.

Letitia and Mae join children leaving school to march in Birmingham, Alabama. Disappointed that they were not arrested while picketing Woolworth’s, they feel reassured by Rev. Bevel, who tells them they made a great contribution to the movement.