(Credit: U.S. Mint)
On September 17, 1796, President George Washington announced he would step down when his second term ended. The crowned heads of Europe were astonished that he would give up so much power. In his announcement Washington said it was time “for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government.” Washington’s model was the Roman general, Cincinnatus, who left his farm (as Washington had left Mount Vernon) to save the Roman Republic and then returned home when his duty was done. Another citizen would need to step up to become president and, Washington believed, becoming a private citizen again was an honorable role too.
Under British rule, Americans were subjects of a king. Under the Constitution, they became citizens of a republic. Under King George III, they were expected to do as the monarchy wished. Under President Washington, he was expected to do as the people wished. Citizens in our republican form of government guide the nation.
Who’s a Citizen?
Many take citizenship for granted. We shouldn’t. Our history in filled with struggles to define “citizen” and expand citizens’ rights. When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, states had citizens but there was no definition of American citizenship. Practically, that meant to be a citizen you had to be white. Tragically, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 upheld that injustice. Scott, a Missouri slave taken north to free territory before being taken back to the South, sued for his freedom. Writing for the 7-2 majority, Chief Justice Roger Taney stated flatly: “We think [people of African ancestry] are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution.” It took the Civil War and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 to define American citizenship for the first time with the language that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
Well, not exactly “all” persons. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited naturalization of those with Chinese descent. Native Americans were often excluded from citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. It took the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to end racial and gender restrictions for naturalization.
14th Amendment to the Constitution (Ratified in 1868)
Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Citizenship is a legal status but the “privileges and immunities” of citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment were not defined by it. Most Black citizens were routinely denied the vote for another century. Women did not get the vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. Conferring, exercising and protecting the rights of citizenship is an ongoing responsibility for all of us.
Being a citizen also means understanding that all human beings in America (not just legal citizens) have certain rights. As the 14th Amendment says: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen, but citizenship is an especially cherished accomplishment for those who go through the naturalization process. That requires being able to read and write in English, passing a citizenship exam and taking an Oath of Allegiance. Sitting in the audience on July 4th at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is an inspiring lesson as new citizens are sworn in on the West Lawn.
A New Citizen on July 4th
(Credit: monticello.org)
Let’s Talk
Why don’t we leave deciding who is a citizen up to each state?
Citizenship Conveys Rights but Requires Responsibilities
As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, governments are created to protect natural rights, which existed before government was created:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . .”
The Constitution established the form of government needed to protect our rights. Constitutional amendments have expanded our rights, such as through the Bill of Rights.
Fact Finder
What are the ninth and tenth amendments and why do they matter?
Americans are known for vigorously guarding existing rights and demanding more. Less attention is usually focused on the fact that we must also accept some responsibilities. Responsibilities are not the opposite of rights but are necessary condition for keeping them. Some are obvious, such as voting, paying taxes, defending the nation and serving on a jury. Some are less obvious, such as engaging in civil dialogue, understanding American history and the Constitution, raising children to be good citizens and participating actively in the civic life of a community.
“We forget that only toddlers and sociopaths believe in rights without responsibilities.”
- Eric Liu, Author of Become America
Citizenship Requires Civic Virtue
Benjamin Rush
(Credit: Thomas Sully)
Meeting our responsibilities as citizens requires what the founders called civic virtue. As Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, said: “Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.” The Constitution and laws cannot guarantee a good society. They work only if moral principles underlie our actions. To grasp the importance of civic virtues, consider below some of those most frequently mentioned – and their contrasting vices. Most of these are as important in our private as well as our public lives.
“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” – John Adams
Let’s Talk
Pick a civic virtue from the list. What would it look like in your day-to-day behavior?
Civic Virtue Must Be Put into Action
Civic virtues are habits acquired through practice. Thus, citizenship thrives when civic virtues are practiced. When this fails, we should remember President Ronald Reagan’s statement: “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.” Two examples illustrate what citizenship infused with civic virtue looks like.
Courage: Protesting Against Injustice
On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil, students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, sat down to be served at the Woolworth’s segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were denied service. Police arrived but could not arrest them since they had not violated any law. The young men stayed seated until the store closed and the next day returned with more students. By February 5th, 300 students were involved. Press coverage soon led to similar sit-ins at 55 establishments in 13 states. Some demonstrators were arrested and media coverage of the effort lit a spark in the civil rights movement that expanded first to Freedom Riders (who protested segregation on interstate buses) and then mass demonstrations. A hallmark of all these protesters was nonviolence. Participants exhibited civic virtues - courage, self-restraint, humility and adhering to the rule of law - that called attention to the nation’s failure to live the values of the American creed. The Greensboro Four had help from Ralph Johns, a local white businessman who took his citizenship responsibility seriously too, arranging to ensure the media coverage they needed to call attention to the violation of their civil rights. By July, Woolworth’s desegregated its lunch counter.
Civic virtues that infuse nonviolent movements for change have demonstrated the power of courageous citizen action throughout our history. They were on vivid display on March 24, 2018 when “March for Our Lives” student-led demonstrations at nearly 900 events across the nation sparked calls for legislation to reduce gun violence in the wake of the killing of 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The Greensboro Four
(Credit: african-american-civil-rights.org)
Collaboration: Community Improvement
Tired of being in the news because of their decaying neighborhoods, a coalition of city, private sector, nonprofit and educational institutions joined with local residents to re-imagine 25 acres of the Fitzgerald neighborhood that sits eight miles from Detroit’s center. A centerpiece of the project is the 2.5 acre Ella Fitzgerald Park. Once just vacant lots and fire-damaged houses, the park now features a playground, basketball court and lots of green space for the community. Initially skeptical, residents got engaged when invited to help design, build and name the park. Rather than do it for them, the public-private collaborative did it with them, investing in creating active citizens not passive customers.
The park is part of a more extensive effort to revitalize decaying buildings and vacant lots into a “main street” with retail businesses, gathering places, and a way to connect two educational institutions – Marygrove College and the University of Detroit Mercy. Local residents are trained in green-collar construction and maintenance jobs as both employment opportunities and ways to practice active citizenship in building their community.
One of the best ways to practice citizenship is through such community engagement. Such shared experiences, as scholar Cass Sunstein argues in #republic, help form social glue because people see “one another as fellow citizens with shared hopes, goals, and concerns.”
Ella Fitzgerald Park
(Credit: Bee Gant)
Of course, there are many other ways to practice responsible citizenship. Here are some:
Perhaps most important, making a safe, secure and happy home, raising children to be ethical and helpful and fostering their education for citizenship are also ways to practice responsible citizenship.
Fact Finder
What are the requirements to run for Congress, the Senate and the presidency? Why are they different?
What is it Important for Citizens to Know?
“Ahmed” was a Turkish immigrant who wanted to become a U.S. citizen. In addition to proving he could read and write in English, he also had to score 60 percent on a series of questions about American history and government before taking the Oath of Allegiance. The bar he reached, sadly, is not achieved by many Americans who in a survey scored on average only 39 percent on the same citizenship questions. Sixty percent, for example, could not name who the United States fought in World War II. Fifty-seven percent did not know how many justices sit on the Supreme Court. Ignorance of our history and how government works makes it impossible to learn from the past, acknowledge and correct historical wrongs and have well-informed arguments about our future. This is one reason that propelled the What Every American Should Know project of the Aspen Institute, in which noted Americans list the “top ten” things they encourage people to learn about America. It has also fostered the Made By Us project, a collaboration of history and civics organizations, including many museums, to help Americans learn about their past and shape our future.
Can You Answer These Questions from the U.S. Citizenship Exam?
What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?
The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
What is the “rule of law”?
There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
It’s important not just to know such facts but also why our government works as it does. Misunderstandings make it easy for others to sway our thinking with misinformation or biased arguments. Here are five very important aspects of American government to understand.
The United States is Not a True Democracy. We call ourselves a democracy, but a classic democracy would be like the old New England-style town meeting where everyone gathers in a hall, gets to speak and decisions are made by majority vote. The framers of the Constitution doubted this could work in a large, heavily populated republic. More importantly, they believed direct democracy encouraged demagogues, who knew how to stoke public passions and lead people away from reasoned action. After all, slavery and segregation codes were created and maintained through elections by majority vote. Even Hitler came to power in an election. The founders wanted a way to cool public passions. So they established a representative form of government in which the people rule indirectly through elected and appointed officials.
Elected Officials are Not Required to do What Voters Want. We often criticize public officials for “ignoring what the people want,” but they are sometimes supposed to do just that, acting instead on what the people need. The Constitutional Convention rejected a proposal that would have required members of Congress to vote exactly as instructed by their home districts, believing this would prevent the national government from taking a wiser (and less emotional) view of the nation’s needs. We should want our elected representatives to talk with each other, take a national not just a local view and think long-term – at least some of the time!
Our Government was Not Designed to be Efficient. Railing at government inefficiency is a popular pastime and a sure way for politicians to stoke public fury. People wonder why government can’t be run like a business – why it takes so long to pass legislation and get things done when the private sector moves faster. The reason, known as “checks and balances,” is that the framers feared tyranny more than inefficiency. The Constitution makes it hard to use governmental power so as to preserve liberty. That’s why it divides power first between the states and the federal government and then within the three branches of the national government itself. The motive of the private sector is profit, but the driving force of the public sector is justice. If you want a law passed in a few days, put into immediate action and violators quickly arrested, tried and jailed without protections of law or due process, you can find that in China or Russia, but we should be thankful we can’t find that here.
Protest for and Against Gay Marriage
(Courtesy: Jamison Wieser-wikimedia.commons.org)
Our Form of Government Depends on Following the Rule of Law. John Adams, one of America’s founders, said that “we are a government of laws and not of men.” We see this every day somewhere in America when people follow the law in bringing about change rather than resorting to violence. The First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, the press, religion, assembly and petition channels our energy into changing the law peacefully, as was almost always the case in the campaign for gay marriage. If we abandon the rule of law, as some protesters did in attacking police and looting stores to protest the killing of George Floyd or attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, then society is at the mercy of the physically strong.
The Constitution is a Mechanism for Managing Diversity. The framers understood that people will always differ in their needs, wants and views. The branches of government, how they interact and their openness to citizen input are all designed to allow differences to get expressed, considered and acted upon. At the same time, the philosophy behind the Constitution acknowledges the value of disagreements, believing the best public policies emerge from a contest of opinions, not a suppression of them. That’s why the civic virtues are so important. Without them, Americans’ efforts to get what they want at the expense of all others would breed anger, distrust and violence.
The Citizen’s Oath Can Guide Us to Active, Productive Citizenship
Whether you became a citizen by birth or naturalization, one way to refresh your citizenship is to recommit to it. A nice way to do so is to recite the citizenship Oath of Allegiance taken by all new citizens. You can also discuss and take the oath fashioned by Citizen University as is regularly done by participants in their “Sworn-Again America” programs:
“I pledge to be an active American.
To show up for others.
To govern myself.
To help govern my community.”
I recommit myself to my country’s creed:
To cherish liberty as a responsibility.
I pledge to serve and to push my country:
When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.
Wherever my ancestors and I were born,
I claim America
And I pledge to live like a citizen.”
Being a responsible, thinking citizen takes “brain work.” It requires all of our reasoning and emotional capacities. In Question #3 we’ll explore the brain, its limits and things we need to keep in mind to use it to full advantage as citizens.