Constitution Day 2023: @ Delta College

Constitution Day is Friday, September 17, 2021. In September of 1787, the Founding Fathers signed the most influential document in American history: The United States Constitution. We commemorate Constitution Day every year in remembrance of our rights and freedoms as citizens of the United States. 

Our Constitution Day theme this year is Civil Rights. The intent of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution was to expand civil rights in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment made it illegal for a state to pass laws "which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States... [or] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, [or] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the U.S. or any state to deny a citizen the right to vote based on that person's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Please stop by the Library between Wednesday, September 8th, and Friday, October 1st. Visit our Constitution Day exhibit behind the Reference Desk and online. The exhibit, Diversity, was provided by the Stonewall National Museum & Archives and Wells Fargo.

This exhibit contextualizes the LGBT Civil Rights Movement within the larger historical context of Civil Rights struggles throughout United States history. Using an excerpt of President Barack Obama’s 2013 presidential speech as a starting point for discussion, the four-panel exhibit depicts historic photos, landmark-event court rulings, and examples of high-achieving individuals from the ranks of the Women’s Suffrage, African American, and LGBT Civil Rights Movements.