The Constitution begins with three words: We the People. But in 1787, who counted as “the people”? And what did it mean to take part in the political life of a brand-new nation?

Host Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey talks with Dr. Rosemarie Zagarri, professor of history at George Mason University and author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic and The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776–1850. They trace the shift from subjects of a king to citizens of a republic, and how each state wrote its own answer to who could vote, who could hold office and who belonged.

Zagarri shows how much politics happened outside the ballot box. Women boycotted British goods, wore homespun and drank herbal tea in protest. Some formed their own Daughters of Liberty. In New Jersey, women and free Black people who owned enough property could vote from 1776 until 1807, when the legislature took that right away. And she untangles the three-fifths compromise, and why counting people instead of places was a radical idea at the time.

Finally, what the founding era tells us today. Voting is essential. But citizenship has always been bigger than the ballot: petitioning, protesting, writing and speaking out. As Zagarri puts it, that’s how change happens.