This episode of Crash Course in Politics provides a general overview of your First Amendment right to free speech. Theoretically, this right allows you to critique the government without fear of retaliation. But it’s essential to remember that not ALL speech is protected equally under the First Amendment, and it only applies to the government. Therefore, just because you have a right to free speech doesn’t mean your private employer, for instance, can’t fire you for something you say (unless your work for the government and then things get a bit more complicated). Discussed are significant Supreme Court cases that have brought us to our current definition of free speech, and some of the more controversial aspects of free speech – like hate speech.
This episode of Crash Course in Politics provides a general overview of the First Amendment and the freedom of religion. It examines some significant Supreme Court decisions and discusses how they’ve affected our interpretations of the law with respect to issues like animal sacrifice and prayer in schools. As you’ll see, there aren’t always clearly defined, or bright-line, rules in approaching these legal questions. Sometimes tests have to be developed to account for the ever-changing nature of the law and it’s applications.
This episode of Crash Course in Government provides a general overview of civil rights and civil liberties. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they are actually very different. Our civil liberties, contained in the Bill of Rights, once only protected us from the federal government, but slowly these liberties have been incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment to protect us from the states. We’ll take a look at how this has happened and the supreme court cases that got us here.
The 1976 BBC documentary, The Great Sit Down, focuses on the United Auto Workers’ struggle for recognition and the sit-down strikes against General Motors which took place in February 1937.
At 8 p.m. on December 30, 1936, in one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States, autoworkers occupy the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM’s workers; they also wanted to make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that would help protect assembly-line workers from injury. In all, the strike lasted 44 days.
The Flint sit-down strike was not spontaneous; UAW leaders, inspired by similar strikes across Europe, had been planning it for months. The strike actually began at smaller plants: Fisher Body in Atlanta on November 16, GM in Kansas City on December 16 and a Fisher stamping plant in Cleveland on December 28. The Flint plant was the biggest coup, however: it contained one of just two sets of body dies that GM used to stamp out almost every one of its 1937 cars. By seizing control of the Flint plant, autoworkers could shut down the company almost entirely.
So, on the evening of December 30, the Flint Plant’s night shift simply stopped working. They locked themselves in and sat down. “She’s ours!” one worker shouted.
GM argued that the strikers were trespassing and got a court order demanding their evacuation; still, the union men stayed put. GM turned off the heat in the buildings, but the strikers wrapped themselves in coats and blankets and hunkered down. On January 11, police tried to cut off the strikers’ food supply; in the resulting riot, known as the “Battle of the Running Bulls,” 16 workers and 11 policemen were injured and the UAW took over the adjacent Fisher Two plant. On February 1, the UAW won control of the enormous Chevrolet No. 4 engine factory. GM’s output went from a robust 50,000 cars in December to just 125 in February.
Despite GM’s enormous political clout, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy refused to use force to break the strike. Though the sit-ins were illegal, he believed, he also believed that authorizing the National Guard to break the strike would be an enormous mistake. “If I send those soldiers right in on the men,” he said, “there’d be no telling how many would be killed.” As a result, he declared, “The state authorities will not take sides. They are here only to protect the public peace.”
Meanwhile, President Roosevelt urged GM to recognize the union so that the plants could reopen. In mid-February, the automaker signed an agreement with the UAW. Among other things, the workers were given a 5 percent raise and permission to speak in the lunchroom.
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Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
“The Fight in the Fields” traces the history of the United Farmworkers Union and the life of its founder, César Chávez, from his birth in Arizona, his education into organizing and non-violence, his formation of the union, to his death in 1993. It includes newsreel footage of the Delano grape boycott, Senate hearings conducted by Robert F. Kennedy, Chávez’s fasts, encounters with growers and rival Teamsters. Recent interviews with Chávez family members, Ethyl Kennedy, Roger Cardinal Mahony, Governor Jerry Brown, and current and past UFW leaders round out the history and assessment of Chávez and the Union.
The 1960s was a turbulent decade in American history, fraught with political conflicts ranging from racial equality to the war in Vietnam. The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, one of the least studied social movements of the 1960s, encompassed a broad cross section of issues—from restoration of land grants, to farm workers rights, to enhanced education, to voting and political rights. The video documentary Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, a four-part documentary series, corrects this oversight. Ground-breaking for the material it covers, the series is one of the few to address the history of Mexican Americans in general and that of the Chicano Movement in particular; it is an indispensable resource for scholars and students.
Part 4, “Fighting for Political Power,” discusses the creation of La Raza Unida Party as a third party force for Mexican-American political power which demanded social justice in the Latin American community. It culminates with the Raza Unida convention, the 1972 election and the fragmentation of the party at the height of its membership and recognition.
After America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 consigning 127,000 people of Japanese ancestry to internment camps. Fred Korematsu challenged the internment all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In “Korematsu v. United States” (1944), the Court sided with the government.
In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans.
From the award-winning PBS series American Experience comes We Shall Remain, a provocative look at the historical relationship between Native Americans and the United States government. In 1973, American Indian Movement activists and members of the Lakota Indian tribe residing on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota occupied the town of Wounded Knee, demanding the removal of a corrupt tribal council leader and a redress of past grievances. The 71 day stand-off between approximately 200 American Indians and the U.S. Government brought national attention to the institutional assault against the cultural identity of American Indians and the poverty and corruption on Indian reservations. The courageous stand by the activists led to a groundswell of public support allowing thousands of assimilated Indians across the country to reaffirm their cultural pride.
Black In America is a multi-part series of documentaries hosted by reporter Soledad O’Brien on CNN. The series focuses on black culture in America and includes panel discussions on issues facing the black community. The fifth installment in the series, Who is Black in America? focuses on how skin tone and mixed ancestry affect racial identity. This episode questions whether being black is determined by the color of your skin, society’s perception, the dominant culture of your family, or self-identification? Soledad O’Brien follows the story of 2 young Philadelphia poets as they explore their racial identity through workshops conducted by their mentor, Perry “Vision” Divirgilio of Philly Youth Poetry Movement. Scholar Yaba Blay analyzes the influences skin color can have on racial identity and social opportunity.
Having been dormant for decades, the Ku Klux Klan reemerged in the U.S. after the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision, gaining momentum in the U.S. as the civil rights movement grew. That the Klan would rise once again wasn’t surprising, but where the reincarnation took place was. North Carolina was long considered the most progressive southern state; its image was being burnished weekly on CBS by the enormously popular “The Andy Griffith Show.” In 1963, North Carolina salesman Bob Jones chartered what would become the largest Klan group in the country, which, under his leadership, grew to some ten thousand members. In the process, the group helped give the Tarheel State a new nickname: “Klansville, U.S.A.”
Camden Civil Rights Project 