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Amending
America
Exhibit Shows How Changes in the Constitution
Affect the Way Our Democracy Works
By Christine Blackerby
W
hat if we elected the President of the United States by lot—by pulling a ball representing a
candidate out of a bowl? A constitutional amendment
introduced in Congress in 1846 proposed precisely that.
In 1838, one member of Congress shot another,
prompting the introduction of an amendment to the
Constitution to deny public office to duelers.
A citizen wrote to Congress in 1963 to advocate for
a constitutional amendment to require that Americans
“tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.” Anyone who failed in that duty would be sen
tenced to 20 years of hard labor.
These are just a few of the more than 11,000 consti
tutional amendments that have been proposed in Con
gress since the Constitution was written in 1787. Some
of them were proposed to call attention to an issue,
some as satire, some to allow a member of Congress
to take a political stand, and some were very serious
appeals to resolve pressing problems.
Left: A mural by Barry Faulkner in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building depicts James Madison handing a copy of the Constitution to George Washington (far right).
Prologue 39
as a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. In response, mem bers of Congress introduced hundreds of amendments, both to protect school prayer and also to confirm that school prayer could not be required. Others urged Congress not to alter the First Amendment at all. A letter from a Baptist church stated that these proposed amendments addressed a prob lem that did not exist. God and the Bible never left schools, the letter writer pointed out. Stu dents could still pray; the Court stated only that compulsory prayer was unconstitutional. Flag burning is free speech, ruled the Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson (1989). The Court explained, “Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
In response, Congress considered an amendment to alter the First Amendment to prohibit flag burning. This proposed amendment illustrated that the firm belief in the importance of the American flag as a unique symbol of freedom was at odds with the equally powerful notion that the First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to freedom of speech, regardless of how insulting that speech may be. Visitors can read a letter to Congress from People for the American Way that details several objections to the Flag Desecration Amendment, which ultimately failed to pass. Does the First Amendment’s protection of the free press include crime and horror comic books aimed at children? The Senate Judiciary Subcom mittee on Juvenile Delinquency collected more than 600 comic books during a 1954 investiga tion of whether such comics contributed to youth crime, and one of these is displayed in the gallery. Although the Senate considered censor ing this kind of publication, ultimately they proposed no such bill. The program for the 1963 March on Wash ington illustrates civil rights activists’ plans to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. But congressional opponents of the then-pending Civil Rights Act argued that the march would incite violence and riots and
Al Capone thought he had fixed the jury in his 1931 tax evasion trial, but when the judge heard about it, he had the jury switched with anoth er one. The replacement jury convicted Capone. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a jury trial in criminal prosecution.
therefore should be prohibited as an “ille gal assembly.” Their fears were unfounded, and the march proceeded calmly. Many of the addresses were memorable—especially Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech—but the most emotionally power ful aspect of the march was the demonstra tors’ peaceful assembly. The Civil Rights Act became law in 1964. Petition drive organizers in the 1800s and 1900s vigorously exercised their First Amend ment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Organizers printed the text of a petition on the top of a page and then left the bottom blank for signatures. After gath ering signatures, the pages were often glued end to end to form one giant document, which was then sent to Congress. One of these large petitions, from the residents of the District of Columbia against the enactment of a District Prohibition bill, is rolled up like a scroll and will be in the gallery for visitors to examine. Like so many other parts of 21st-century life, petitioning has gone digital. Visitors will be able to use an iPad to explore the “We the People” website, created by the Obama administration to allow direct peti tioning of the President. Anyone can create a petition, and if a petition gets 100,000 sig natures within 30 days, the administration will respond. Many of the documents at the National Archives tell stories of the protection of First Amendment rights, but some show these rights being infringed. Visitors can see a poster by the Hollywood writers and actors who created the Committee for the First Amendment in 1947 to defend their right to free speech from the investigations of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) of Congress. In an attempt to root out communists from American institutions during the Cold War, HUAC subpoenaed actors and screenwriters known as the “Holly wood Ten” to question their beliefs and asso ciations with the Communist Party. Citing the First Amendment, they refused to answer and were jailed for contempt of Congress.
Winter 2015
