Photo by Wendy Thigpen Holmes

Today is First Amendment Day at UNC. I’m in class with black tape across my mouth to show the importance of this amendment. This campus-wide, day-long event is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. Today students are reading from banned books, singing banned music and discussing the importance of each of the rights protected by the First Amendment. The Carolina Association of Black Journalists is staging a demonstration of the ways African Americans pushed back when they were denied First Amendment freedoms during the Civil Rights Movement in America. More about that after the jump. Remember to be tolerant when others exercise their rights.

Can you name all five freedoms mentioned in the First Amendment? (I always forget one) Get the answers after the jump!

First Amendment Freedoms:

Religion – The First Amendment prohibits government from establishing a religion and protects each person’s right to practice (or not practice) any faith without government interference.

Speech – The First Amendment says that people have the right to speak freely without government interference.

Press – The First Amendment gives the press the right to publish news, information and opinions without government interference. This also means people have the right to publish their own newspapers, newsletters, magazines, etc.

Assembly – The First Amendment says that people have the right to gather in public to march, protest, demonstrate, carry signs and otherwise express their views in a nonviolent way. It also means people can join and associate with groups and organizations without interference.

Petition – The First Amendment says that people have the right to appeal to government in favor of or against policies that affect them or that they feel strongly about. This freedom includes the right to gather signatures in support of a cause and to lobby legislative bodies for or against legislation.

(Source: First Amendment Center – Voices for the First)

Here’s video from First Amendment Day by the Daily Tar Heel

Some key findings from a new survey by the First Amendment Center:

• 71% of Americans still see a free press as a necessary “watchdog on government,” though nearly half of those responding (49%) strongly disagreed with the statement that the news media reports the news without bias.
• Only freedom of speech was named by more than half of respondents, 55%. Freedoms of religion, press and assembly were named by less than 20% of those responding.
• Nearly one in five Americans (19%) saw the First Amendment as “going too far” in the rights it guarantees.

Many people don’t know that the Civil Rights Movement helped moved the First Amendment.

NAACP v Alabama (1958)

The Supreme Court ruling protected the free-association (assembly) rights of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People members from official harassment. As part of its strategy to enjoin the NAACP from operating, Alabama required it to reveal to the State’s Attorney General the names and addresses of all the NAACP’s members and agents in the state. But the Court concluded that the state could not compel disclosure of the group’s membership list under a statute that required such information from out-of-state corporations. In the tumultuous civil rights era, the Court recognized that divulging the names of NAACP members would expose them to attack and so undermine the ability of the group to advocate its message.

How would your life be different if there wasn’t a First Amendment?