Civil Rights Museum Program Ties America's Beginnings To Current Protests

This weekend, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro will hold a virtual program on the American Revolution. It's the second in a three-part series commemorating the 60th anniversary of the integration of the Woolworth's lunch counter. 

The series is significant in light of current protests, and it's designed to reawaken people about the ideas that brought this country into existence.

Each program is a standalone experience, so participants can join at any point along the way. The first, U.S. 1.0, covered the revolutionary stage of the country's development. University of Pennsylvania professor Will Harris, the museum's principal scholar, calls this the country's "tear-down" period. 

Saturday's program, focused on the country's "build-up," is called U.S. 3.0.

“Which is in fact the current regime,” says Harris. “This is the third founding — the 14th Amendment founding, centered on full citizenship and the protection of rights of persons. And we become at that point...that becomes our purpose of existence as a country. And then for 150 years, we've ignored that, or at least we've resisted it.”

In September, during the final program in the series, Harris will cover the second stage of the country's development on the anniversary of the drafting of the 1787 Constitution. He calls this the “figuring it all out” period.