What every American should know

March on Washington
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, during the March on Washington, when King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
AFP/Getty Images | File 1963

Eric Liu and Anne-Marie Slaughter spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week about the things they say all Americans should understand.

Liu is the executive director of the Aspen Institute's Citizenship and American Identity Program. He was a speechwriter and later a deputy domestic policy advisor for President Bill Clinton. He now teaches civic leadership at the University of Washington.

Slaughter is an emerita Princeton professor and CEO of New America. She was the first woman director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department; dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School; and an international law professor at Harvard Law School.

The festival described the talk:

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In 1987, E.D. Hirsch sparked a national debate with his book Cultural Literacy, claiming that there is a foundation of common knowledge every American should know — and codifying it in a list of 5,000 facts and cultural references.

Hirsch's famous list was attacked for being too focused on "dead white men." But now, amidst giant demographic and technological shifts, we need such common knowledge more than ever, and it needs to be radically more diverse and inclusive. What should today's Americans know to be civically and culturally literate?

Slaughter compiled her own must-know list:

Americans should know the meaning of...

1) Jazz
2) The Gilded Age
3) The Trail of Tears
4) Sojourner Truth
5) The Dust Bowl

And should know the meaning of these documents

1) Declaration of Independence
2) Gettysburg Address
3) Declaration of Sentiments, delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848
4) Korematsu dissent by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, which addressed the constitutionality of Japanese internment in 1944
5) Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech