What I've Learned From Shay's Rebellion

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Chengera cuminika is a journalism and communications professor at rutkers university. Cuminika: Society has always been deeply stratified, and that there have always been upheavals, labor strife. The reason poor folks were poor basically because of rich people, like rich folks are exploiting them through taxes and unfair laws and ultimately violence. What does all this have to do with the u sn tion and what that document tells us about American democracy?

In the summer of 1787, fifty-five men got together in Philadelphia to write a new Constitution for the United States, replacing the new nation’s original blueprint, the Articles of Confederation. But why, exactly? What problems were the framers trying to solve? Was the Constitution designed to advance democracy, or to rein it in? And how can the answers to those questions inform our crises of democracy today?

By producer/host John Biewen with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Woody Holton, Dan Bullen, and Price Thomas. The series editor is Loretta Williams.