Today, July 28 marks 150 years since the 14th amendment to the constitution was ratified in 1868. For Blacks in America, this motion is groundbreaking towards achieving social equality in North America and overall civil rights history. The 14th Amendment targets and defines citizenship rights and establishes them through due process and equal protection rights. The amendment vows to grant citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” including former slaves who were freshly freed after the Civil War under the 13th amendment via the Emancipation Proclamation. This means that Black people are now granted the right to become a citizen of the United States.
The 14th Amendment is an inclusive response to the communal strife and national disputes on the political dignity of Blacks in North American in the aftermath of forced captivity and the Civil War. It was apparent that the 13th amendment was not enough to ensure Blacks will receive equal treatment and protection from the local government. Especially during a time when America was going through a massive change were grand sacrifices were seeking justice in the desire for acceptance.
Once Blacks became citizens of the United States by law, the coming of grassroots organizations came into play. It was time to show and prove the security of Black identity in America. During the vigil of the Civil War, the Pennsylvania Civil Rights League sprouted with leadership assigned to distinguished state residents William Forten, Octavio Catto with a goal to acquired Black male voting rights and stop acts of segregation on the streetcar lines of Philadelphia. Political conventions ran rampant in the South for the sake of defining citizens rights through the power of image and reality.
Despite attempts to define citizenship, the 14th amendment was still subject to violation. In 1896, racial segregation was deemed to be constitutional under the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson where public facilities were authorized independent transmissions as long as they are equal in quality. This holding was later overruled in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, where state laws that chartered separate public school facilities for white and Black children were officially deemed unconstitutional.
The ratification of the 14th amendment one-hundred and fifty years later can only tell how what the true intent of its coming was. The Congress which was Republican-led sought out to grant all born in the United States to be citizens, but was the citizenship of Blacks taken seriously? Or, was the passing of the 14th amendment a strategic way to formulate a passive version of slavery? With modern day grassroots movements in the likes of Black Lives Matter and even the “conscious” community, Blacks in America will continue to define citizenship through their natural given right.
