Dr Karen Korematsu, Founder and President of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the daughter of the late civil rights icon, Fred Korematsu, is set to be the featured speaker at the Robert H Jackson Center’s Constitution Day event. Submitted photo

Dr Karen Korematsu is set to be the featured speaker at the Robert H. Jackson Center’s annual Constitution Day event on Tuesday.

Constitution Day is annually Sept. 17, though can be celebrated on another day if the 17th falls outside of the school week. The day dates back to the 1930s but became known as Constitution and Citizens Day in 2004. The day is set to celebrate the signing of the Constitution and people’s rights as an American citizen. The Constitution was signed on Sept. 17, 1787.

Kristan McMahon, president of the Robert H. Jackson Center, said that the center likes to take the day as an opportunity for education, as Constitution Day connects to their mission and education work.

“We want to encourage students to get involved in the community and to see themselves as active change makers,” McMahon said. “We want them to see that they don’t have to wait until they grow up to have an impact.”

Korematsu has been a guest at the Jackson Center multiple times, and her talk — which will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Robert H. Jackson Center, 305 E. Fourth St. — will focus on her father, Fred Korematsu’s Supreme Court case. This year marks the 80th anniversary of that case, “Korematsu versus United States”.

A landmark 1944 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of executive order 9066, ordering Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II, the case came after Fred Korematsu, who was 23 at the time, did not comply with the order to leave his home and job and report to an internment camp. He was arrested in 1942 and on Dec. 18, 1944, a divided Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision, that the detention of Japanese Americans was a “military necessity” not based on race, a ruling that Robert H Jackson dissented against. The conviction was overturned in 1983.

The Robert H Jackson Center has a different speaker and focus each year for their Constitution Day event. This year, Korematsu, who is the Founder and President of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute in San Francisco, will be discussing her father’s case, the impact that it had and the institute’s work on civic education for students.

“Karen is a dynamic speaker that inspires me every time I hear her talk,” McMahon said. “Her talk will instill in people of all ages that we all have a part to play and to be active in our community. I hope the conversation will inspire that.”

Besides the talk the Robert H. Jackson Center has two exhibits currently on display. The “Voices and Votes” exhibit is a Smithsonian traveling exhibit, and there is a second exhibit about Chautauqua County and the role the county has played in democracy in America. McMahon said the center specifically requested the Smithsonian exhibit for September and October to connect to Constitution Day and the upcoming November election. Other future Jackson Center events include a community conversation on Sept. 24, led by New York State educators on Jackson’s federal prosecution speech. McMahon invited the public to check these out as well as the Constitution Day speaker event.