The International Civil Rights Center and Museum in downtown Greensboro is holding a special presentation on Thursday, July 25 – “Building America Better, the Distinctive Constitutional Founding to the Civil Rights Movement.”
From 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday, University of Pennsylvania Professor Will Harris, the principal scholar of the museum, will offer a presentation on three Constitutional Amendments critical to the nation’s civil rights effort: the 13th, adopted in 1865, the 14th, adopted in 1868 and the 15th, adopted in 1870.
According to a press release sent out by the museum promoting the event, the three amendments “lent authority and substance” to the civil rights movement and the July 25 event will be a great one for learning more about those amendments and the associated history.
The event will also be forward looking as well, exploring ways current and future leaders can help expand on existing liberties.
“The 1960s Civil Rights Movement promoted both action and ideas,” states the press release. “It was energized not only by insistent protest against oppression and injustice but also by sustained advocacy of a vision for a better America. Its most effective leaders were not just opposed to the wrong (looking backward) but in favor of the right (looking forward).”
It adds, “In fact, therefore, those leaders should be understood as founders themselves in the constitution making of the next United States, as well as reformers of defective civic relations. Their project is not simply a would-be, or a should-be country of the imagination, but a can-be and will-be nation of real citizens.”
