About the Game

After a mere 200 years, the US has experienced 50 years of increasing language control. The resulting decline of honest discourse has led us to a point where even humor can be labeled dangerous as we near our 250^th birthday. The tug and pull that our forefathers intentionally designed into our democracy has slipped into a spiral of polarization that discourages the very interactions necessary for it to thrive. As our educational system was converted from teaching foundational liberal principles focused on how to think to prescribed solutions focused on what to think, obfuscation of responsibility for the vast body of legislation surrounding slavery and a reinvention of separate but equal policies that redirect national focus from opportunities to outcomes has robbed the country of its soul, along with any useful notion of our own history, and increasingly, a general sense of reality.

It's high time this country rolls back the rugs to air out our uncomfortable truths and honestly assess how we got to this point. This medicine doesn’t need to be awful, presented in a self-directed game format that encourages critical thinking and civil discourse, educational or social groups can relearn American history and engage in the waning art of honest debate in an enjoyable setting. Pursuing truth by daring to look behind the curtains of our forgotten history, Civil Fights^TM is designed to put people back on the same page by mirroring the democratic process to establish a common foundation that supports civil discourse once again.

Critical thinking is employed every turn as players vote on answer acceptability with a “Yea” or a “Nay”, while each round challenges the group with long-forgotten, sometimes uncomfortable, and occasionally purely fun contextual information. Every decade provides a set of Q&A style flip cards, which have been carefully curated to craft a perspective that’s something in between looking behind the curtains of revisionist history and a truth and reconciliation exercise. The player with the most fact cards after traversing all the decades in play gets to pick a more provocative open-ended discussion topic for the group to conclude the game, while putting their newly acquired knowledge to the test. Each game is different, and in the end, every player who learns something is enriched by the experience.

Who’s it For?

This game is designed for people brave enough to advance their education beyond their schooling, such as:

• POLITICAL & CULTURAL ENTHUSIASTS

• EDUCATORS & HOME SCHOOLERS

• FAMILIES & YOUNG PROFESSIONALS

• HIGH SCHOOL & UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

• HISTORY BUFFS

People today experience US history in fragmented and twisted threads, which lack context and fail to contribute to the broader perspective necessary for genuine understanding. The key to coming together, therefore, is to take a step back and re-establish an intact timeline of our civil rights history.

How to Play

Experience the Democratic process in a manner intended by our forefathers:

1. Assemble your group

2. Establish your rules and record them for future reference

3. Take turns answering questions to learn as a group while honing critical thinking skills

4. Winner picks a final open-ended group discussion topic

5. Engage in dynamic yet civilized group discourse based on the knowledge gained