The adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791 marked the creation of a uniquely innovative mechanism for constitutional change by which Americans have continued to renew and redefine their governance over a two-hundred-year period. Now, in time for the bicentennial celebration of this great document, seven distinguished scholars combine their expertise to explore the history and contemporary meaning of these first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. One of the nation’s leading civil rights historians, he is the author of several acclaimed and prize-winning books, including Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice and The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America.