Scholarship@WashULaw
Modern Day Protests: As American As Apple Pie
Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
2020
Publication Title
Hamilton and the Law: Reading Today's Most Contentious Legal Issues through the Hit Musical
Abstract
This chapter assesses why a teenage Alexander Hamilton wished for a war. The answer is simple: As he says in Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton: An American Musical, Hamilton's fourteen-year-old self instinctively knew in 1769 that “it was the only way to rise up!” That remains true 250 years later: Protests matter. The importance, relevance, and power of protests loom large in Hamilton. As Frederick Douglass uttered in 1857, as a precursor to America's Civil War, “power concedes nothing without a demand.” Hamilton seemed to understand this in 1769, and later when he joined a bloody but successful revolution on the mainland to fight for independence against British rule. His protests contributed to the Founding of the nation. That fundamental right to protest — a right guaranteed under the First Amendment — is now under attack. Sadly, many Americans have forgotten what protests have meant to America and the achievement of American ideals.
Keywords
Alexander Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton, Protests, American Civil War, Revolution, Right to Protest, First Amendment, America, American ideals
Publication Citation
Kimberly Jade Norwood, Modern Day Protests: As American As Apple Pie, in Hamilton and the Law: Reading Today’s Most Contentious Legal Issues through the Hit Musical 185-190 (Lisa A. Tucker ed., 2020)
Repository Citation
Norwood, Kimberly Jade, "Modern Day Protests: As American As Apple Pie" (2020). Scholarship@WashULaw. 633.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_scholarship/633