Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change
General Constitution Resources
The authors of the essays in this issue have challenged you to think about the Constitution in new and stimulating ways. Here are some sources of information on the creation of the Constitution itself in 1787. The two most recent overviews of the creation of the Constitution are:
Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. New York : Harcourt, 2002.
Stewart, David O. The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Internet Resources
The Gilder Lehrman Collection boasts literally hundreds of documents relating to the Constitution. The easiest way to identify materials that meet your specific needs (for example, drafting the Constitution in 1787 or debate on adopting the Bill of Rights, 1787-1791) is to go to the search page:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/index.php
Use "Advanced Search," putting your preferred keyword (“Constitution” or “Bill of Rights”) in the "Description" field.
In the wider World Wide Web, you'll find an incredible selection of materials. You might start with the "Top Treasures" of the Library of Congress:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr00.html
For an image of the Constitution from the National Archives, see:
http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html
This can be supplemented by the historical essays and teaching suggestions at the National Archives "Primary Documents" website:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Constitution.html
Our faithful friends at American Memory don't fail us here. Look at their "Primary Source Set" for teaching the Constitution. Also, see the AmMem Primary Documents in the American history segment on the Constitution. It's a great guide to online resources from Library of Congress collections in this area.
Supplement this with the "Collection Connections" page resources on the Continental Congress and Constitution:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/bdsd/history.html
And their "Primary Source Set" for the Constitution:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/community/cc_wethepeople_kit.php
The "Primary Documents" page for the Bill of Rights serves the
same purpose for those amendments:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/billofrights.html
The Avalon Project at Yale has mounted an excellent timeline linking you to documents relating to U.S. Constitution dating from the classical period to the twenty-first century:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/usconst.htm
As well as transcriptions of Madison's notes on Convention debates:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/debates/debcont.htm
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia's online "Kids" webpage allows students to explore by Supreme Court decisions, topics, and keywords. The "Founding Documents" link takes you to ancestors of Constitution:
http://www.constitutioncenter.org/explore/ForKids/index.shtml
Last, but certainly not least, the NEH Edsitement website's new lesson plans for September 2007 featuring the Constitution can be found here:
http://edsitement.neh.gov/monthly_feature.asp?id=115
Resources for Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change
You'll find my "general" suggestions for resources for this issue useful for locating studies of the actual work of the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and the evolution of that frame of government over the last 220 years. Let me remind you that Linda R. Monk's The Words We Live by: An Annotated Guide to the Constitution (New York: Hyperion, 2003), will be especially helpful here.
The sources for the "Antifederalists" essay in this issue will lead you to plenty of materials on George Mason and other opponents of ratification. You may want to add this one, which deals specifically with Mason and the Bill of Rights:
Shumate, T. Daniel, ed. The First Amendment: The Legacy of George Mason. Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1985. A series of lectures delivered at Mason's namesake-university.
These are your best sources for reviewing the background of the adoption of the first ten Constitutional amendments:
Amar, Akhil Reed. The Bill Of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Brant, Irving. The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning. Indianapolis,
Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. This is somewhat dated, but it's the grandfather
of modern Bill of Rights scholarship.
Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds. The Bill of Rights: Government Proscribed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.
The "sources" page for James Horton's essay in this issue will provide more than enough to keep you busy with material for studying the Constitution and African Americans. The March 2006 History Now issue on Women's Suffrage contains essays and resource suggestions that should meet your needs for looking at the changing legal status of women:
http://www.historynow.org/03_2006/index.html
Once again, I'll refer you to our "Civil Rights" issue (June 2006) for material on the evolution of African American rights in the twentieth century. I think you'll fined James Patterson's "The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies" an especially useful introduction:
http://www.historynow.org/06_2006/ask2.html
Once again (and again), I urge you to visit "LandmarkCases.org",
a project of the Supreme Court Historical Society. You can't do better
than this for materials on Brown v. Board of Education. Everything
can be downloaded in PDF files, and the sources don’t begin and
end with the case’s hearing and the Court’s decision –
you can trace earlier cases as well as the repercussions of Brown
in political cartoons, the Little Rock desegregation crisis, and the success
and failures of school desegregation in the fifty years since Brown:
http://www.landmarkcases.org/
Your students will certainly want to learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer. Here are two books that will help:
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Dutton, 1993.
Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
There are several good online sources for Hamer as well:
Transcript of Fannie Lou Hamer's oral history interview in archives of University of Southern Mississippi "Civil Rights in Mississippi" Digital Archive:
http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/oh/hamer.htm
A short sketch of her life:
http://www.beejae.com/hamer.htm
And a good Wikipedia article with current links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer
For students who want to explore resistance to court-ordered school desegregation, I'd suggest:
Duram, James C. A Moderate Among Extremists: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the School Desegregation Crisis. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981.
Reed, Roy. Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997. A biography of the Arkansas governor who defied President Eisenhower.
Webb, Clive, ed. Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. A collection of essays, many on Little Rock.
The Little Rock High School is now a national historic site as well. The website is pretty lean, but you may find it useful:
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/ak1.htm
