Protecting some of our most cherished freedoms—religious liberty, free speech, a free press, the freedom of assembly, and the right to petition—the First Amendment is a pillar of democracy and the American way.
The 1,500-square-foot exhibit features more than 20 artifacts highlighting all five freedoms, including a draft opinion with handwritten edits from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis; an anti-Vietnam War armband worn by the Tinker family and associated with the landmark student speech case, Tinker v. Des Moines; The New York Times’ 1971 publication of the classified “Pentagon Papers;” and a pennant from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
“Those who won our independence . . . believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
Concurring opinion in Whitney v. California
