COURSE
ON CIVIC LITERACY: POTENTIAL TEXTS
*Core texts
·
*The Funeral
Oration of Pericles (Thucydides, The
Peloponnesian War, 431 B.C.)
·
*The Magna
Carta (1215)
·
Iroquois
Constitution
·
Letter to
John Smith, by Powhatan (ca. 1609)
·
Defense of
Freedom of the Press, by Andrew Hamilton (1735)
·
A Demand to
Limit Search and Seizure, by James Otis (1761)
·
Slaves’
Appeal to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts (1774)
·
Letter to
John Adams, by Abigail Adams (1776)
·
*The
Declaration of Independence (1776)
·
Common
Sense, by Thomas Paine (1776)
·
*The
Federalist Papers (selections, e.g., No. 10, 1787))
·
*The
Constitution of the United States (with Amendments, 1787)
·
First
Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson (1801)
·
*Appeal of
the Cherokee Nation (1830)
·
Bearing
Witness Against Slavery, by Angelina Grimke (1838)
·
Resistance
to Civil Government, by Henry David Thoreau (1848)
·
*Seneca
Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
·
*The Case
for Public Schools, by Horace Mann (1848)
·
The
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
·
*Independence
Day Speech at Rochester, N.Y., by Frederick Douglass (1850)
·
Independence
Day Speech at Rochester, N.Y., by Frederick Douglass (1852)
·
Address to
the Legislature of New York on Women’s Rights, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1854)
·
Chief
Seattle’s Oration (1854)
·
Speech to
the National Women’s Rights Convention by Lucy Stone (1855)
·
A House
Divided, by Abraham Lincoln (1858)
·
First
Inaugural Address, by Abraham Lincoln (1861)
·
*Second
Inaugural Address, by Abraham Lincoln (1865)
·
Gettsyburg
Address, by Abraham Lincoln (1863)
·
Speech to
the American Anti-Slavery Society, by Frederick Douglass (1865)
·
Speech on
Women’s Right to Vote, by Susan B. Anthony (1873)
·
We Will
Fight No More, Forever, by Chief Joseph (1877)
·
*Preamble to
the Constitution of the Knights of Labor (1878)
·
*A Century
of Dishonor, by Helen Hunt Jackson (1881)
·
Speech on
Behalf of the Woman Suffrage Amendment, by Susan B. Anthony (1884)
·
Supreme
Court Opinion on Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
·
*Dissent
from Plessy v. Ferguson, by John Marshall Harlan (1896)
·
*The
Strenuous Life, by Theodore Roosevelt (1899)
·
Speech
against Imperialism, by William Jennings Bryan (1900)
·
*The Niagara
Movement Declaration of Principles (1905)
·
Statement to
the Court, by Eugene V. Debs (1918)
·
Dissenting
Opinion in Abrams v. United States, by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1919)
·
*The Right
to One’s Body, by Margaret Sanger (1920)
·
In Defense
of John Scopes, by Clarence Darrow (1924)
·
*First
Inaugural Address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933)
·
Economic
Bill of Rights, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1944)
·
*Dissenting
Opinions in Korematsu v. United States, by Justices Frank Murphy and Robert H.
Jackson (1944)
·
Declaration
of Conscience, by Margaret Chase Smith (1950)
·
*Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)
·
*Letter from
Birmingham City Jail, by Martin Luther King (1963)
·
The
Wilderness Idea, by Wallace Stegner (1969)
·
Letter from
Delano, by Cesar Chavez (1969)
·
*Speech at
Moscow State University, by Ronald Reagan (1988)
