January 1, 2007

For planning purposes

What: John Locke Foundation & N.C. History Project Headliner Luncheon

When: Noon Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Where: Holiday Inn Brownstone
1707 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, NC 27605

Price: $15

Who: Historian Jeff Broadwater is author of the recent highly praised biography, George Mason: Forgotten Founder. Broadwater is associate professor of history at Barton College. He holds a law degree from the University of Arkansas and a Ph.D. in American history from Vanderbilt. He is the author of two other books: Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade, and Adlai Stevenson and American Politics: The Odyssey of a Cold War Liberal.

The John Locke Foundation’s N.C. History Project has invited Broadwater to lead a discussion of the Bill of Rights. He’ll focus on how two of the nation’s most creative Founders understood their handiwork.

George Mason was one of the nation’s most influential Founding Fathers and one of the most frequent speakers at the Constitutional Convention. But he refused to sign the Constitution, in large part because it did not contain a Bill of Rights.

James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights in 1789. It was heavily influenced by Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, written in 1776. In writing the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Mason set a precedent: a constitution should safeguard fundamental human freedoms. As a member the first federal Congress, Madison pushed the Bill of Rights through a reluctant House of Representatives.

Contact JLF Communications Director Mitch Kokai at 919-828-3876, 919-306-8736, or [email protected] for more information.