Thread by @cmclymer

Friends, it's a demoralizing day for our democracy, so I'm gonna tell you a quick story that will hopefully cheer you up and put things in perspective. It's about the simultaneous absurdity and rage and beauty of our democratic system. Let me take you back to 1789. (thread)

That year, six months after the effective date of the Constitution, twelve amendments were sent to the states for ratification. Ten of these would become the Bill of Rights. The 11th became obsolete. And the 12th was ratified by six states and then stalled, seemingly permanently.

The amendment that stalled stated that Congress cannot implement an increase or decrease in their pay until after the start of the next term, thus giving voters the chance to voice their approval, or otherwise, of such an act. Seven states ratified, and it was promptly forgotten.

Fast-forward to 1982, when Gregory Watson, a freshman at the University of Texas, was searching for a paper topic for his political science course. He came upon the proposed amendment and thought: "Huh, there was no expiration set for ratification. Doesn't that mean it's alive?"

The teaching assistant for his course disagreed, handing back a "C" for his grade. He appealed to his professor, Dr. Sharon Waite, who was not particularly impressed by it and called the issue a "dead letter".

So, 19 year-old Watson thought: "Fine, I'll get the thing ratified."

By the time Watson came across the amendment, it had then been ratified by eight states (plus Kentucky, more on that later). It needed 38 states to be added to the Constitution. He started writing letters to members of Congress, nearly all of whom rejected the idea out-of-hand.

But finally, then-Sen. William Cohen of Maine (who would become Secretary of Defense under Clinton), sent the inquiry back home, where it was eventually introduced in the Maine Legislature and ratified in 1983. Watson had his first victory and was hooked.

He wrote a hell of a lot of letters to state lawmakers around the country and watched in amazement as the process worked, albeit quite slowly. Arizona, Tennessee, and Oklahoma ratified it in 1985. New Mexico, Indiana, and Utah followed in 1986.

By May 1992, his letter-writing campaign had led to 26 states ratifying it, bringing his total to 36. Several states raced to be the 38th, and Watson listened over the phone as Michigan was understood to become the 38th state that made Watson's adopted child the 27th Amendment.

Interestingly, it was later discovered that Kentucky had previously ratified it back in 1792, a fact lost to history, which would make Alabama (immediately preceding Michigan) the state that officially put it over the top as the 38th.

In any case, despite skepticism from some legal scholars and politicians, the U.S. Archivist verified the process was legit, signed its certificate of ratification, and the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was published in the Federal Register on May 19, 1992.

Imagine the surprise of Dr. Sharon Waite, who had absconded from her disillusionment with academia and was working on a citrus farm when she got a call asking if she was the professor who had given Watson the "C" on the paper that started this journey.

Rather than being chagrined, Dr. Waite was delighted. One of her students had led a campaign that amended the Constitution. The grade she handed down motivated a series of events that changed the foundational document of our country.

Asked if he deserved a grade change, she said: "Yes, I think he deserves an A after that effort — A-plus!"

In 2017, the University of Texas approved the request.

On the request form, Dr. Waite wrote: “In light of the student’s heroic efforts to prove the professor and T.A. wrong in their assessment of his term paper, Mr. Watson deserves an A+.”

(image credit: Jay Janner)

This isn't the norm, I know. Democracy is much closer to Tarantino than it will ever be to Disney. But it's not the lone exception, either. There are numerous other examples of seemingly impossible odds being overcome, many of those in the midst of egregious injustice.

Think of Suffrage and Selma and Stonewall. Think of all the barriers in our government that have been broken, many quite recently. If you had told me in 2005 that by 2016, the first Black President would celebrate marriage equality being legalized, I wouldn't have believed it.

It's okay to feel what you feel today and tomorrow. I'm certainly angry. It's gonna be a long year. Just don't lose faith in positive change. This is an incredibly messy, bloody, hypocritical democracy, but it does eventually change for the better. It has always. /thread