In celebration of Black History Month, scholars Lucas Morel and Melvin Rogers join to discuss how African American leaders and citizens, such as Prince Hall, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. have invoked the ideas and principles of the Declaration of Independence throughout American history to push for a more free and equal America. Thomas Donnelly, chief scholar of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
Video
Participants
Lucas Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. His teaching and research interests include American government, political theory, Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Ellison, and race and equality. He is a pre-law advisor and an accomplished writer.
Melvin Rogers is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brown University. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2008) and The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political (Princeton University Press 2023).
Thomas Donnelly is chief scholar at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- National Constitution Center, "The Declaration Across History" Primary Sources
- Lucas Morel, Lincoln and the American Founding
- Melvin Rogers, The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought
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