CT Project

Growing up as a citizen of The United States of America, we are taught
the American education system. This system is designed to teach its

students the basic fundaments of life, how to read, write, do math, and most
importantly, their history. In the classroom we learned about the Constitution
and the Declaration of Independence, Peace Treaties, The Boston Tea Party,
The Civil War, The American Revolution and so much more. We learned about
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammed Ali, Underground Railroad and
the significant role it had for slaves during slavery. What I do not remember
however is learning anything in depth about the lives of slaves, other than
anguish, pain, torture, and defeat. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a
conversation at work years into my adult life that I learned that Christopher
Columbus didn’t really discover America, or that the Indians and the English
settlers weren’t friends like we were taught in school. Just in recent years its
been noted that Columbus Day is now known as Indigenous Peoples Day,
paying respect to the fact and acknowledging a little bit of history that this
land belonged to them first.
Racial disparities have been noted to be one of the biggest problems in

America for a long time. In recent times there’s been protests, and police and
citizen brutality, The Black Lives Matter Movement, and The 1619 Project. In
2011 President Barrack Obama made a proclamation that made Fort Monroe
a national monument reads, “The first enslaved Africans in England’s
colonies in America were brought to this peninsula on a ship flying the Dutch
flag in 1619, beginning a long ignoble period of slavery in the colonies and,
later, this Nation.” The 1619 Project brings light to when the first group of
African slaves were brought to the North American lands in Virginia, as
opposed to the indigenous and Spanish and European people or slaves rather
that were already here before hand from Florida and South Carolina. It was at
this time Nikole Hannah-Jones writes in her articles that the consequences of
slavery and the contributions of Black Americans should be placed at the
center of the national narrative to reframe American history. Black people
have been fighting for their rights and freedoms for as long as they’ve been
here, even to this day. The problem with the 1619 project is that there are
people, white people, and white people in politics especially, who are upset
and worried about the teachings of Black history being taught in the present-
day classroom. There are also some historians that are trying to negate some
of the testaments within the Project written by Hannah-Jones. This project
goes into great depth with interviews, and in-depth research from scholars
and historians to get the best and accurate recreation of black history. People
of color have the right to learn about their past and the struggles and
contributions their ancestors gave to this nation. Up until now all they’ve
learned about their past has been struggle and strife. Colita Nichols Fairfax,
co-chair of the Hampton 2019 Commemorative Commission and professor at
Norfolk State University says, “We have to rethink the place of those Africans
in history,” “They are not just victims. They survived and contributed.”
Forcibly being brought over on boats these people brought with them
contributable traits from their home such as their language, religious
practices, their agricultural skill and knowledge and important to the English
colonies’ success, rice. African people were used to clear the forests and
pave the way to make roads, they laid the foundation for railroads, built
houses, farmed, raised children, and so much more. Its stated the the Civil
War ended because of the issue of slavery and that it was the contributions
of black soldiers who fought for the Union army, to defeat the Confederacy. It
brings to light the fact that Abraham Lincoln and as noble as he was, wanted
to free the slaves and send them back to their native lands, rather than let
them share the land with the white people. To this day things are still unfair
for people of color in the United States. From receiving harsher punishments
for crimes, being stereotyped, impoverished, and oppressed, not much has
changed since the Civil Rights Movement. A perfect example of how things
haven’t changed is referenced from The Emory Law Journal
FIRST AMENDMENT
PROTECTIONS
FOR “GOOD TROUBLE”
Dawn C. Nunziato
ABSTRACT
In the classical era of the Civil

Rights Movement in the 1950s, 1960s,
and 1970s, activists and protestors
sought to march, demonstrate, stage sit-
ins, speak up, and denounce the system
of racial oppression in our country. This
was met not just by counterspeech—the
preferred response within our
constitutional framework—but also by
efforts by the dominant power structure to
censor and shut down those forms of
public rebuke of our nation’s racist
practices. Fast forward seventy years, and
the tactics of the dominant power
structure have essentially remained the
same in response to today’s civil rights
activists who seek to protest police
brutality, other forms of oppression, and
disregard of Black lives, and who seek to
educate the public about our nation’s
legacy and practice of systemic racism.
Today’s civil rights activists have been
met not just with counterspeech but with
efforts to silence them—for example, by
the anti- protest statutes enacted in many
states, by efforts to financially cripple
protest movements through the novel
theory of “negligent protest” liability, and
by so- called anti-Critical Race Theory
laws that originated in a Trump-era
Executive Order and that have now been
enacted in many states, which muzzle the
teaching of concepts of systemic racism in
our public education systems—including
at the college level.
 The Pedas Family Endowed Professor of Intellectual
Property and Technology Law at The George
Washington University Law School. I am extremely
grateful to Garrett Dowell, Jacob Hochberger, David
Markallo, and Ken Rodriguez for their excellent and
expert research and librarian assistance in
connection with this Article. I am also very grateful to
Todd Peterson for his insightful comments on this
draft. I am also deeply indebted to the excellent and
extremely diligent law review editors at the Emory
Law Journal, especially Everett Stanley, Hannah
Baskind and Radley Gillis, for their insightful
comments and meticulous edits on this Article. Civil
rights activist John Lewis famously urged us to “[g]et
in good trouble[,] [n]ecessary trouble, and help
redeem the soul of America.” Devan Cole, John Lewis
Urges Attendees of Selma’s
‘Bloody Sunday’
Commemorative March to ‘Redeem the Soul of

America’ by Voting, CNN,
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/politics/john-lewis-
bloody-sunday-march-selma/index.html (Mar. 1, 2020, 5:36
PM). He made this statement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama, on March 1, 2020, in commemoration
of the events of Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, during which
peaceful civil rights protesters (including Lewis himself) were
beaten by law enforcement officers for crossing the Pettus
Bridge. Id.  See Harriet Coombs, How Radical Was the
Classic Civil Rights Movement?, BRISTORIAN (Sept. 18, 2019),
https://www.thebristorian.co.uk/essays/the-classic-civil-rights-
movment.

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Growing up as a citizen of The United States of America, we are taught

the American education system. This system is designed to teach its

Racial disparities have been noted to be one of the biggest problems in

FOR “GOOD TROUBLE”

In the classical era of the Civil

Commemorative March to ‘Redeem the Soul of

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