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In perhaps his most famous speech, Baptist Minister Martin Luther King Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream" to over 250,000 in attendance during the August, 1963 March on Washington. Dr. King is a prime example of using First Amendment rights to gain other liberties, and this moment is an example of the right to peaceably assemble. This eLesson focuses on the circumstances surrounding that speech.

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In the midst of an unpopular war, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918. This law, aimed at silencing criticism of the United States during World War I, restricted freedom of speech in the interest of national security. It was not the first time that speech had been restricted for this reason, nor would it be the last. This eLesson explores the Sedition Act of 1918 and one of the individuals found guilty of violating it, Charles Shenck.

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James Madison remarked, '[T]o the press alone; checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." Focusing on William Randolph Hearst and "yellow journalism," this month's eLesson explores how a free press, even with all of its faults, guarantees that newspapers are only responsible to citizens and not the government.

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One primary purpose of the First Amendment is to safeguard the individual’s right to participate in political discourse and the political process. Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union Address, which he delivered as an unannounced presidential candidate, spotlights the way the First Amendment empowers individuals to express their political views in our free society.

*For a version of this lesson with questions and answers on separate pages, click here* Less then ten years after the First Amendment was passed and the national government restricted from abridging freedom of speech and press, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798, making it a crime to criticize the government. This month we spotlight the law and the ensuing challenge to the Constitution and, indeed, to the new republic.

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*For a version of this lesson with questions and answers on separate pages, click here*

Connecticut is the most recent state to pass legislation protecting journalists from being jailed for refusing to name their sources in court. Are “shield laws” necessarily for a free press to function, or do they grant protections beyond the scope of the First Amendment?

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This month’s First Amendment in History spotlights Deborah Weisman and the Supreme Court case Lee v. Weisman (1992). In this case, Deborah objected to her public school district’s practice of inviting clergy to deliver invocations and benedictions at graduation ceremonies. The Supreme Court agreed that the Rabbi-led non-sectarian prayer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

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This month our spotlight is on writer Upton Sinclair. His novel The Jungle, showed Americans that writers could change the law, and maybe even the world, by exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of the press.

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Billy Gobitas, a ten-year-old Pennsylvania public school student, refused to salute the American flag because doing so would have gone against his religious beliefs. Billy argued that his First Amendment rights to free speech and religious exercise meant the government could not force him to partcipate in the daily ceremony. The Court ruled against him, but three years later reversed itself in a similar case, finding that the First Amendment protected students' rights to refrain from saluting the flag.

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Celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr holiday by helping your students understand and appreciate his contributions to American freedom. In this month's eLesson, we spotlight the way King exercised his First Amendment rights to secure greater political and civil rights for American Americans, and for all people.

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This month, we spotlight Frederick Douglass and the ways he exercised his First Amendment rights of speech and press to open the eyes of people on two continents to the horrors of slavery. Born a slave, his lectures and writings helped bring about several constitutional amendments that ensured the expansion of American freedom for millions of people.

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In 1848, three hundred people exercised their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, New York. There, discussing the "social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman," the modern women's rights movement was born. This month's eLesson spotlights how the First Amendment freedom of assembly can be key to bringing about change.

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