Finding Shade Under the Tree of Liberty: A Pedagogical Exploration of Civil Rights in the United States

 

"The Tree of Liberty" (1846) from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

While Thomas Jefferson quipped, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground,” (A. Berkes, 2015) traditional narratives of the United States have frequently embraced a narrative of inevitable progress. Through various metaphors—many of an arboreal nature—liberty in the United States is frequently conceptualized and taught as a linear progression wherein inherent freedoms are expanded from a few to a many to a majority to all. Moving beyond having students identify and define moments of rights expansion, the following proposes, discusses, and analyzes a scaffolded research assignment for students in a secondary American Government course. The assignment challenges students to critically engage with historic moments of government expansion to evaluate a teleological, linear explanation of civil rights. In doing so, students will develop an understanding that far from inevitable liberty is, in the words of D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson (2019), a narrow corridor that can be exited for anarchy or authoritarianism with surprising rapidity.

A Proposal for Liberty

Adapted from B. Ginsberg, et. al., (2017), p. 67. 

 At some point, civics textbooks compel students of American governance to examine the narrative of expanding liberty through the constitutional amendments. J. Q. Wilson, et. al., (2017), L. E. Ford, et. al., (2017), and W. T. Bianco and David T. Canon (2017) all provide tables similar to B. Ginsberg, et. al., (2017) in which constitutional amendments begin with the free exercise of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petitioning in 1791 and conclude with Congress being denied the ability to increase the salaries of representatives in 1992 (p. 67). In skimming the list, the mistakes, oversights, and biases of the Founders are gradually corrected as slavery is eliminated (1865), women are granted the right to vote (1920), and wealth restrictions, including poll taxes and literacy requirements, are removed (1964). The challenges posed by tables of amendments for civics instructors is in their ability to mask how liberty, far from being an inevitably expanding force, has throughout the American narrative ebbed and flowed. Indeed, liberty has frequently flowed to some and routinely ebbed for others creating chasms of race, ethnicity, and class.

How, then, can the narrative of liberty in the United States be taught to avoid a teleological story of inevitable expansion? I propose an inquiry-based project that challenges students to investigate and, more importantly, evaluate critical moments in the narrative of liberty. Provided with scaffolded academic resources, students would be able to chose moments to engage with from an instructor provided list. The list might include:

Project Grouping	Suggested Acts and Amendments	Approximate Time Period
Jacksonian Democracy	State Laws Expanding the Franchise to All White Men	1820s through 1856
Federal Expansion of Citizenship	13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875; Expatriation Act of 1868; Naturalization Act of 1870.	1865 through 1870
Women’s Suffrage	Local Laws, State Laws, and 19th Amendment to the Constitution; Equal Pay Act of 1963	1890 through 1963
Native American Enfranchisement	Dawes Act of 1887; Snyder Act of 1924; Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975; Native American Languages Act of 1990; Native American Housing Assistance Act of 1996	1887 through 1996
Civil Rights Acts	24th Amendment to the Constitution; Civil Rights Act of 1964; Voting Rights Act of 1965; War on Poverty Acts	1964 through 1972
Health Care as a Right	Social Securities Amendments of 1965; American with Disabilities Act of 1990; Affordable Care Act of 2010; Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act of 2020 (as well as subsequent extensions)	1965 through 2021

 

Importantly, the above table already has several noticeable differences from the Amendments list in civics textbooks. First, the list encourages students to think about how significant changes to liberty in the United States are possible at the local, state, and federal levels through legislation and constitutional amendments. Second, the list supports students in exploring both the advances and limitations of expanding liberties in the United States through engagement with complex narratives. To develop student expertise in an efficient and timely manner, though, scaffolded selections from academic texts will need to be provided by the instructor.

In order to provide students with a common language for discussing the expansion of liberty beyond the course textbook, instructors could assign “What’s the Matter with Ferguson?” from D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson’s The Narrow Corridor (2019). Before assigning the selection, students would need to be provided with direct instruction on the overarching argument—and complex metaphor—adopted by Acemoglu and Robinson. Given the comparative nature of the argument—that liberty is achievable under very specific and difficult to maintain circumstances—Acemoglu and Robinson’s selection on the United States moves beyond the often-narrow national confines of civics textbooks. The metaphor adopted by Acemoglu and Robinson to structure their argument is built upon Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1691) and posits that there are four different types of governments, or Leviathans: Absent Leviathans, Shackled Leviathans, Paper Leviathans, and Despotic Leviathans. An Absent Leviathan corresponds approximately with anarchy or near anarchy, while a Despotic Leviathan corresponds to non-democratic regimes, including authoritarianism and totalitarianism in their many forms. Paper Leviathans are those regimes in which government appears to preserve liberty and the well-being of the citizenry, but in reality creates an oppression of neglect. Finally, a Shackled Leviathan, like the United States, denotes those regimes where constitutional and legal systems have prevented despotism and anarchy, while preserving, encouraging, and maintaining liberty. In their chapter on the United States, Acemoglu and Robinson (2019) argue that while “there is indeed much to admire in the evolution of the American Leviathan […,] it has also inflected collateral damage” (p. 306). Most importantly, Acemoglu and Robinson (2019) in a relatively short passage eloquently demonstrate that “the Constitution and Bill of Rights […] were not a gift of benevolent elites; they were the result of the tussle between elites and the people” (p. 320). Additionally, Acemoglu and Robinson deftly integrate race, gender, and class analysis into their discussion of the American Leviathan with case studies ranging from the National Rifle Association (p. 328) to police violence (pp. 304-305). The selection from Acemoglu and Robinson (2019), therefore, provides the core text for each student’s or group of students’ text sets addressing an expansion of liberty (M. A. Cappiello and E. T. Dawes, 2013, p. 85).  

Moving beyond the core text, each student or group of students should be provided with a few selections from academic sources to “prime” their research. These priming texts acknowledge that many students do not have access to robust research libraries that enable scholars to recognize and explore academic conversations. Depending on classroom operating procedures, the priming texts could be made available as scanned selections, photocopies, or in a classroom library. Once students have noted and annotated their priming texts, they will be able to explore scholarly repositories like JSTOR and media databases like PROQUEST and GALE for materials that expand and deepen their understanding of each expansion of liberty.

Sampling of Priming Texts

The post-Civil War Federal Expansion of Citizenship project grouping provides a particularly rich literature from which to draw priming texts that place the historic narrative of Reconstruction within a more political science analytical framework. R. M. Smith’s “The American That ‘Never Was’: The Radical Hour, 1866-1876,” from his Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (1997) provides a comprehensive analytical overview of the Amendments, Acts, and debates surrounding the federally mandated expansion of citizenship after the Civil War. Smith’s (1997) chapter presents enough information that students with some prior knowledge of American history will find the text accessible. Divided into short two-to-three-page sections, the text balances primary source analysis of contemporary commentators like W.E.B. Dubois with later historiographical analysis. Particularly valuable sections include a detailed examination of race, gender, and the intellectual context of Reconstruction, as well as the success and failures of the Freedman’s Bureau. Finally, the chapter presents Congressional debates surrounding various legislative expansions of citizenship, the more widely known constitutional amendment discussions, and the less studied role of the state and federal courts after the Civil War. To deepen student engagement with the debates, G. C. Altschuler and S. M. Blumin’s “People and Politics: The Urbanization of the Political Consciousness” from their Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (2000) could be assigned. The chapter focuses upon how the Civil War and Reconstruction changed perceptions of the federal government’s role in the life of the individual, including analyses of how diarists reflected on political participation. Having read these two secondary historic sources, students would be prepared to explore themes and topics of interest to them in JSTOR.

Beyond the historic, though, students could be guided through the assignment sheet and instructor mentoring to connect their new historic expertise to contemporary issues. For example, the provision in the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery allowed for unremunerated prison labor, which led to the widespread adoption of chain-gangs. Students could utilize selections from D. Childs’ Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary (2015), S. Bauer’s American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment (2019), and John L. Spivak’s classic Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang (1932). Importantly, students will draw connections between the fights for the expansion of liberty that dominated political discussions at the end of the Civil War with the legacies of freedom, or the lack thereof, in their America. Additionally, such deep connections to contemporary issues will allow students to reflect on how such issues might be addressed in ways that parallel the civic activism of the post-Civil War era. Finally, and perhaps unique to many civic projects found in textbooks, students will be able to question what the price of compromise can be in political discourse, government legislation, and individual freedoms.

Conclusions

Utilizing a text-set approach, therefore, students can deeply explore issues of constitutional reform and the expansion of liberty in the United States. Instructors, though, must provide students with on-ramps to civic discourse that are rich with evidence. Through that evidence students can develop expertise, discuss conclusions, and draw meaningful connections between past and present attempts to create a more perfect union.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2019). The narrow corridor: States, societies, and the fate of liberty. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

Altschuler, G. C., & Blumin, S. M. (2000). Rude republic: Americans and their politics in the nineteenth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Bauer, S. (2019). American prison: A reporter's undercover journey into the business of punishment. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Berkes, A. (November 20, 2015) “The natural progress of things…”, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, last accessed May 2, 2021, from https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/natural-progress-things-spurious-quotation

Cappiello, M. A., & Dawes, E. T. (2013). Teaching with text sets. Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Education.

Childs, D. (2015). Slaves of the State Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Ginsberg, B., Lowi, T. J., Weir, M., Tolbert, C. J., & Spitzer, R. J. (2017). We the people: An introduction to American politics. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Hobbes, T. (1996). Hobbes: Leviathan. R. Tuck, R. Geuss, & Q. Skinner, Eds. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Shea, D. M. (2016). Magruder's American Government. Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.

Smith, R. M. (1997). Civic ideals: Conflicting visions of citizenship in U.S. history. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Spivak, J. L., & Davis, D. A. (2012). Hard times on a Southern chain gang. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Wilson, J., Dilulio, J., Jr., Bose, M., & Levendusky, M. (2017). American Government: Institutions and Policies. Boston, MA: Cengage.