Volume 4 | Issue 2
Before It Became History
A New Podcast Series from the O'Connor Institute
Before the American Revolution became legend, it was lived.
They were organizers, writers, soldiers, printers, petitioners, diplomats, and spies. Many were not famous. They argued, sacrificed, and acted without knowing whether the country they imagined would survive.
Before It Became History, a new podcast series from the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, tells those stories and others from America's founding era to the near present.
Justice O'Connor Named Among 250 Americans Who Shaped the Nation
HISTORY.com marks the 250th anniversary with a list that includes the first woman on the Supreme Court
HISTORY.com has named Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to its list of 250 People Who Shaped America. She appears in a section titled "What Glass Ceiling?" as the woman who, in 1981, became the first to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
The recognition is fitting. But for the O'Connor Institute, the fuller story is the legacy she left behind.
Justice O'Connor was an Arizonan, a rancher's daughter, a state legislator, a judge, and ultimately a justice of the nation's highest court. After retiring, she devoted the next chapter of her public life to civic education, warning that self-government cannot endure if citizens do not understand it.
She called the decline of civics education a crisis. She built programs to address it. That work continues through the O'Connor Institute today.
Our Next Book Club Pick
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…"
Most Americans know the words. Fewer have stopped to examine them.
Walter Isaacson's The Greatest Sentence Ever Written does exactly that, unpacking the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, tracing how Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams shaped it, and asking what it still commits us to. At a moment when Americans often disagree about the country's direction, the book invites readers back to the words Americans have argued over and renewed for nearly 250 years.
Selected by Civics for Life app members as the Book Club's current pick, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written will be discussed on June 25 at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT.
History on the Civics for Life Community App
For history lovers, lifelong learners, and engaged citizens
The O'Connor Institute's commitment to history has always been inseparable from its commitment to citizenship. To understand American democracy you have to understand the people, ideas, arguments, compromises, and struggles that shaped it and that continue to shape it today.
The Civics for Life Community App carries that forward. Members can listen to episodes of Before It Became History, join the Book Club, take a daily civics quiz, and engage in conversations in the Public Square. It is free, and it is built for people who take America's past and future seriously.
For those who especially love history, the app even includes For History Nerds, a space for curious readers, lifelong learners, and fellow history buffs to share ideas, ask questions, and go deeper together.
Justice O'Connor believed that informed citizens are the foundation of democracy. The app is one way to keep building that foundation.