Throughout history, / we've seen how being able to use your voice, / how people being able to use their voice / helps people come together. // We've seen this in the civil rights movement. // Frederick Douglass once called / free expression / the great moral renovator / of our society. // He said, / "Slavery cannot tolerate / free speech." // Civil rights leaders argued time and again / that their protests were / a protected form of expression. // And one noted that nearly all of the cases / involving the civil rights movement / were decided on First Amendment grounds. // We've seen this globally too, / where the ability to speak freely has been central / to the fight for democracy worldwide. // The most repressive societies / have always restricted speech the most, / and when people are finally able to speak, / they often use their voice / to call for change. // In this year alone, / people have used their voices / to end multiple long-running dictatorships / in northern Africa, / and we're already starting to hear / from people whose voices had been excluded / just because they were women / or because they believed in democracy. // Now our idea of free expression / has become much broader / over even the last hundred years. // Many Americans know about / the Enlightenment history / and how we enshrined / the First Amendment into our Constitution, / but fewer know / just how dramatically our cultural norms / and legal protections have expanded, / even in recent history. // The first Supreme Court case / to seriously consider free speech / in the First Amendment / was in 1919, / Schenck versus the United States. // And back then, / the First Amendment / only applied to the federal government, / so states could and often did / restrict your right to speak. // Our ability to call out things / that we felt were wrong / also used to be a lot more restricted. // Libel laws / used to impose damages / if you said something negative about someone, / even if it was true. // The standard then shifted, / so that way / it was okay /as long as you could prove that your critique / was true. // And we didn't get / the broad free speech protections that we have now / until the 1960s / when the Supreme Court ruled in opinions like / New York Times versus Sullivan / that you can criticize public figures / as long as you're not doing so / with actual malice, / even if / what you're saying is false. // So we now have / significantly broader power / to call out things / that we feel are unjust / and share our own personal experiences. // We see movements like / "Black Lives Matter" / and "Me Too" spread / and go viral on Facebook. // The hashtag Black Lives Matter / was actually mentioned for the first time / on Facebook. // And this just wouldn't have been possible / in the same way before. // Just a hundred years back, / many of the stories that people are sharing now / would have been against the law / to even write down. // And of course, / without the Internet, / they certainly wouldn't have reached / so many people. //