Modern Moves, Part 2 | America's Written Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar

Soviet propaganda in Africa and Asia pointed to a segregated American capital whose residents could not vote for president. Akhil Reed Amar shows how that argument helped produce the amendments of the 1960s. This lecture closes the written Constitution with the modern amendments and reads them through the course's three themes. The Twenty-Third Amendment brought the District of Columbia into the Electoral College at a moment when both parties were competing for Black voters, a competition that also helps explain Alaska and Hawaii statehood and the immigration reform of the same decade. The Twenty-Fourth ended poll taxes in federal elections, and the Court soon extended the principle to state elections. The Twenty-Fifth answered a Cold War problem made vivid by the Kennedy assassination, that a disabled president leaves no one clearly in charge when minutes matter, and in doing so wrote the presidential tag team into the text. The Twenty-Sixth extended the oldest argument in the course, that those asked to fight should be allowed to vote on the war. Amar ends on what he calls the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, the blank space after the Twenty-Seventh, and on the 1963 March on Washington. Chapters: 00:00 The amendments of the 1960s 02:23 Why the District of Columbia mattered 05:08 The Cold War audience 07:13 Alaska, Hawaii, and projecting power 10:22 The Twenty-Fourth Amendment and poll taxes 14:37 The Twenty-Fifth Amendment after Dallas 17:51 Constitutionalizing the presidential tag team 19:59 The Twenty-Sixth Amendment and Vietnam 23:49 The Twenty-Eighth Amendment 25:23 The March on Washington Learning objectives: After watching, you'll be able to: - Explain how party competition for Black voters shaped the Twenty-Third Amendment - Describe the Cold War argument for domestic civil and voting rights reform - Identify the gaps in presidential succession that the Twenty-Fifth Amendment closed - Trace the link between military service and suffrage across five amendments - Formulate your own proposal for what a Twenty-Eighth Amendment should do 📺 Watch the full playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCq6-l8oFuvk 🎓 Enroll on Coursera for assessments and a certificate: https://www.coursera.org/learn/written-constitution 🌐 Explore more learning opportunities on Yale Online: https://online.yale.edu/courses/americas-written-constitution