Civics In A Year

The Center for American Civics
  • 4.0 (3)
  • COURSES

What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen? Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation. Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship. Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.

  1. 6D AGO

    Plessy Vs. Ferguson

    We walk through Plessy v. Ferguson and how a planned railcar protest helps the Supreme Court legitimize Jim Crow through the “separate but equal” doctrine. We also dig into Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent and why his warning about caste and constitutional duty keeps showing up in modern legal fights.  • rise of Jim Crow segregation in the 1880s and 1890s and why transportation becomes a focal point  • why public accommodations matter in constitutional law and equal access  • Homer Plessy’s test case and what “passing” reveals about racial classification  • the unusual coalition of civil rights activists and railroad operators opposing segregation mandates  • the Court’s reliance on “reasonableness” and its attempt to recast civil rights as social policy  • Harlan’s separation of powers critique and his colorblind Constitution argument  • how Plessy becomes a green light for broader segregation across schools and daily life  • how dissents shape legal strategy and help pave the way to Brown v. Board of Education  Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    18 min

  2. APR 1

    The Lodge Bill of 1890 and the Rise of Jim Crow

    The Lodge Bill of 1890 should be as famous as the Compromise of 1877, yet most of us have never heard of it. We sit down with Dr. Sean Beienberg to unpack how a federal election oversight plan, built around Article I, Section 4, tried to protect free and honest ballots in the South and why its failure helped clear a path toward Jim Crow. If you care about voting rights, election integrity, and the limits of federal power, this story hits hard because it shows how quickly democracy can narrow when enforcement disappears.  We start with the surprising reality that Black voting in the post-Reconstruction South stayed closer to white voting rates into the mid-1880s, then began to drop as intimidation, ballot fraud, and machine politics gained ground. From there we follow the Republican push to enforce the 15th Amendment, the party’s 1888 platform language, and Henry Cabot Lodge’s careful attempt to balance federalism with meaningful protection through federal supervisors and observers. We also explore why Southern Democrats and even political power centers like New York City framed the proposal as a dangerous “Force Bill,” turning oversight into a flashpoint over state sovereignty.  Then the Senate fight turns into a lesson in how power actually moves: a filibuster to buy time, a strategic effort to peel off votes, and a deal tied to silver that flips key senators from Nevada and Colorado. We connect the Lodge Bill’s collapse to the 1892 campaign, the 1894 rollback of federal enforcement, and the rapid wave of mass disfranchisement that followed. We close by defining Jim Crow as government-backed legal racial inequality and setting up our next conversation on Plessy v. Ferguson. If this episode changed how you see U.S. democracy, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave us a review. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    14 min

  3. MAR 31

    What the Black Man Wants by Frederick Douglass

    Freedom is easy to celebrate in slogans and hard to define when the laws get written. Today we sit with Frederick Douglass at the end of the Civil War as he delivers one of the most direct speeches of the Reconstruction era: “What the Black Man Wants.” The country has ended slavery in practice and is debating the 13th Amendment, but Douglass pushes the real issue to the front: what does freedom actually mean if millions of formerly enslaved people still lack political power? We walk through Douglass’s core arguments in plain terms: he asks for “simply justice,” not pity, and he insists that slavery isn’t truly abolished without the ballot. We connect his logic to the Constitution’s system of representation, the idea of consent of the governed, and the basic problem of rights that exist only on paper. We also unpack his sharp response to claims that Black Americans were “unprepared” for citizenship, including his challenge that anyone expected to pay taxes is also fit to vote. Douglass grounds everything in founding ideals, not new ones. His natural rights claim echoes the Declaration of Independence and points straight at the contradiction between American liberty and American exclusion. He also warns against gradualism, arguing that delayed justice is denied justice, and he frames voting rights and equal protection under law as essential tools of self-protection in a violent and uncertain era. If you care about Reconstruction history, Frederick Douglass, voting rights, or what citizenship should mean in a democracy, this conversation will sharpen your view. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: who is still fighting to be fully included today? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    8 min

  4. MAR 30

    How The 14th Amendment Applies The Bill Of Rights To States

    The Fourteenth Amendment promises a baseline of freedom, but the Supreme Court built that promise through a long series of workarounds. We start with incorporation: how protections in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights come to bind state governments, not just the federal government. Along the way, we revisit what Reconstruction lawmakers were trying to fix, why a national “floor of rights” mattered, and how early decisions like United States v. Cruikshank helped stall incorporation for decades. From there, we get into the part that makes lawyers argue and students groan: selective incorporation and substantive due process. We explain how the Court first used the Due Process Clause to protect “liberty of contract” during the Lochner era, then later pivoted to using the same clause to selectively apply speech, criminal procedure, and other civil liberties against the states. We also talk about Justice Hugo Black’s blunt critique and why the Court still resists the cleaner logic of total incorporation, even when modern cases like McDonald and Timbs keep pushing the doctrine in that direction. We close by connecting incorporation to two bigger battlegrounds: unenumerated rights and equal protection. We unpack how privacy arguments show up in Griswold and Roe, what Dobbs changes, and why federalism questions can get tangled with individual rights claims. Then we shift to the Equal Protection Clause, where “all laws classify” forces courts to draw lines between reasonable policy and arbitrary discrimination, through cases like Plessy, Brown, Korematsu, and Loving. If you care about civil rights, civil liberties, and how the Constitution applies in real life, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the series. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    30 min

  5. MAR 27

    How Reconstruction Built Birthright Citizenship And Equal Protection

    The Fourteenth Amendment is often treated like a simple shortcut for “civil rights,” but its real story is messier, more political, and far more useful for understanding today’s constitutional fights. We pick up in Reconstruction, right after slavery ends on paper, when Southern states rush to impose Black Codes that restrict contracts, court access, and basic freedom of movement. That backlash pushes Congress toward the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and then straight into the hard question: what gives Congress the constitutional authority to do any of this? From there, we walk clause by clause through what the Fourteenth Amendment is trying to lock in. We explain how the Citizenship Clause is built to overturn Dred Scott and why its spare wording fuels modern disputes over birthright citizenship and the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction.” We also connect the big three protections in Section One privileges or immunities, due process, and equal protection to the practical problem they’re trying to solve: stopping states from creating one set of rights on paper and another in real life. We also spend time on the sections people forget. Section Two’s representation penalty reveals how lawmakers tried (and failed) to deter disenfranchisement. Section Three’s ban on officeholding for former Confederates shows how Reconstruction uses constitutional design to shape political power. Finally, we trace how “no state shall” complicates federal civil rights law, from the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the meaning of “public accommodations” to the Supreme Court’s 1883 decision and the long road to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If you want a clearer handle on Reconstruction Amendments, constitutional law, equal protection, due process, and the roots of modern civil rights debates, hit subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave us a review. What part of the Fourteenth Amendment do you most want us to unpack in part two? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    17 min

  6. MAR 26

    How The 13th And 15th Amendments End Slavery And Redefine Voting

    The Constitution can promise freedom and still fail to deliver it. We dig into the 13th and 15th Amendments and ask what they were really designed to fix after the Civil War and why their impact has swung so wildly across American history.  We start with the 13th Amendment and why it matters beyond the Emancipation Proclamation. Emancipation is a wartime measure and geographically limited, so we explain how the 13th Amendment removes those constraints and makes abolition a permanent federal policy. We also talk about the deeper question Reconstruction immediately triggers: once slavery is banned, what counts as slavery in practice, and what “badges and incidents” can survive through law, violence, and coercion?  From there we move to the 15th Amendment and the fight over voting rights. Its wording is famous, but its structure is easy to miss: it’s framed as a ban on race-based denial rather than an affirmative right to vote. We unpack why that matters for federal enforcement, highlight Frederick Douglass’s argument that racially neutral suffrage lets Black citizens defend their civil liberties at the ballot box, and look at how the Enforcement Acts and the Grant administration take direct aim at Klan intimidation. Then we track the hard turn: not just court battles, but Congress pulling back, allowing literacy tests and grandfather clauses to gut the promise of Reconstruction until key moments like Guinn v. United States and, most importantly, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  We close with a question that still lands today: what do we do with the 13th Amendment’s “except as punishment for a crime” clause, and how has that language been used over time? If you care about Reconstruction history, voting rights, federalism, and civil rights enforcement, subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review so more listeners can find the series. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    19 min

  7. MAR 25

    Reconstruction Under The Constitution

    Reconstruction sounds like a neat “after the Civil War” chapter until you look at the Constitution and realize the country is trying to do something almost impossible: bring the South back into the Union while dismantling slavery’s political order, all without turning wartime federal power into a permanent blank check. Dr. Sean Beienberg joins us to map the constitutional minefield and explain why this short window produces outsized fights over federalism, civil liberties, and separation of powers. We dig into how Reconstruction begins as military occupation and turns into a battle over readmission terms: What must Southern states do to return, and who gets to decide? We compare Lincoln’s push for quick reintegration “by the book” with Andrew Johnson’s pardons and under-enforcement that provoke Congress to take the wheel. From Lincoln’s veto of the Wade-Davis Bill and his insistence that ending slavery requires the Thirteenth Amendment, to Thaddeus Stevens trying to rebuild the South without giving Washington unlimited control over local policy, the conversation keeps coming back to one question: how do you use federal power for justice without breaking constitutional structure? We also tackle one of the most striking legal moves of the era, Ex parte McCardle, where Congress strips federal court jurisdiction over certain habeas corpus challenges and the Supreme Court accepts it under Article III. Then we zoom out to the long political unwind of Reconstruction and the “Lost Cause” story that later reframes the Civil War, demonizes Reconstruction, and even helps explain when and why Confederate statues go up. If this helped you see Reconstruction, the Constitution, and historical memory with clearer eyes, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave us a review. What part of Reconstruction do you think Americans still misunderstand most? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    19 min

  8. MAR 24

    Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

    A president stands at the Capitol near the end of the Civil War, with victory in sight and grief everywhere and he chooses restraint over celebration. We dig into Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a roughly 700-word speech that still feels like a moral spotlight: not a victory lap, but a reckoning about suffering, slavery, and what the country has to do after the shooting stops.  We trace how Lincoln’s tone changes from his First Inaugural to 1865, as the war’s purpose clarifies and the Emancipation Proclamation reshapes the national story. Then we slow down on the lines that keep echoing: “both read the same Bible,” the refusal to claim God for one side, and the blunt statement that slavery sits at the center of the conflict. Lincoln’s most unsettling image, blood drawn with the lash repaid by blood drawn with the sword, forces a hard question about accountability after injustice and whether a nation can heal without telling the truth about what it cost.  From there, we follow the speech into its forward-looking charge: “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” plus real obligations like caring for veterans, widows, and orphans and aiming for a just and lasting peace. We also connect the address to the Lincoln Memorial, where it’s carved into stone across from the Gettysburg Address, and we point you to our Field Trip Friday work with the Trust for the National Mall and Jeremy Goldstein. If this helped you see American history, civic leadership, and Reconstruction through a sharper lens, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review with the line that stayed with you. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    11 min
See All (190)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

4
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen? Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation. Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship. Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.

Information

  • Creator
    The Center for American Civics
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    190
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Civics In A Year
  • Show Website
    Civics In A Year

You Might Also Like