Constitution Day 2023

The Delaware Regiment of the Brigade of the American Revolution will offer living history demonstrations of Revolutionary War soldiers drilling and firing, drilling of kids with mock muskets, music by the California Consolidated Drum Band, and colonial life living history. 

• Saturday, 9/16 from 10am-5pm
• Sunday. 9/17 from 10am-12pm

The reenactments take place at Pioneer Park in Nevada City

Saturday, September 16th from 4:30-6:30pm – Open-Air Free Outdoor Concert by the Nevada County Concert Band on Pine Street, Downtown Nevada City

• Bring Your Own Chair – a limited number of chairs are provided, but it’s highly encouraged to bring your own, so you don’t miss out.

• Reenactment of the Signing of the U.S. Constitution, Broad and Pine streets, 1:30pm
• 56th Annual Constitution Day Parade – Broad Street, Historic Downtown Nevada City, 2pm

31st Annual 49er Rotary Club Gold Country Duck Race, On Deer Creek, 101 Boulder Street.  

Britanica describes the  Constitution of the United States of America as, “the fundamental law of the U.S. Federal system of government and a landmark document of the Western world. The oldest written national constitution in use, the Constitution defines the principal organs of government and their jurisdictions and the basic rights of citizens.”

Read to entire document here.

The following explanation was adapted from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

We celebrate Constitution Day because that historic document, along with its later-affixed Bill of Rights, is the legal means by which outlines our rights.

Sure, a lot has changed since 1787. The Constitution, as originally written, left a lot of people out. The long fight for equality continues to this day. The Constitution was written for us—the generations of Americans who came after the founding, who pursued happiness and flexed our freedoms. The Constitution was enacted by the people for the benefit of the people.

Since our founding, civil rights advocates have relied on the Constitution in their campaign for equality. Perhaps the most influential advocate for equality, Martin Luther King, Jr., repeatedly referenced the document in his addresses. In his “Mountaintop speech,” King said that when people were “sitting in” at lunch counters to protest segregation, “they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” These words, remind us that our constitutional tradition is one of fighting for freedom from oppressive and unjust laws. They affirm that the document is, as he later said, a “promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Constitution protects minorities of all kinds, from religious to political to racial minorities. The very reason our government was structured as a representative republic rather than a direct democracy was to ensure that minority rights would not be subverted to the will of the majority. Given its explicit protections for freedom of conscience, free speech, privacy, and equal treatment before the law, the Constitution has been the driving force of nearly every civil rights victory at the Supreme Court. Indeed, as one historian said, “No marginalized group in modern American history could have appealed to the Federal government for redress without it.”

The Constitution is more than a document laying out the structure of our government. The Constitution is a guiding light for America’s founding principles of liberty and individual rights. Constitution Day isn’t about a 200-plus-year-old piece of parchment; it’s about the principles and ideals enshrined in that document.

“The Revolution gave us freedom; the Constitution gave us the means to keep it.”

               -Bicentennial Communities

“The Constitution was not meant to hold the government back to the time of horse and wagons.”

               -Woodrow Wilson, 1908

“The Constitution…is what living men and women think it is.”

               -Charles A. Beard, 1936

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them […] too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I know that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was like the present, but without the experience of the present. […] I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions…But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind…We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

               -Thomas Jefferson, 1816

1. Make sure your class is participating! There is no sign-up process, but teachers have to make the decision to participate. Students & parents – ask your teachers about participating!
2. Teachers will hand out our extra credit form to students to bring to the event.
3. Extra credit can be achieved by attending either or both the Revolutionary War Reenactments of the Constitution Day Parade
4. Verify you attended – by have your form stamped at either of the events. To get a stamp at the Revolutionary War Reenactment bring your form to the “History Hunt” area. To get a stamp at the parade, visit the booth marked “Extra Credit” on North Pine Street.

WIN $250 for your classroom plus a pizza party!

TEACHERS: To enter the contest you simply email lynn@nevadacitychamber.com after the event to let us know how many of your students attended. Based on the honor system – please send us accurate numbers.

The contest is per class. If you send multiple classes please only send numbers for your class with highest attendance.