Editors’ Note: March 2020 Issue
Cracks in the Foundation: The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Limits In March 2018, we convened a conference titled “The Many Fourteenth Amendments” at the University of Miami. The timing was propitious. Not only did 2018 mark the sesquicentennial anniversary of the amendment’s ratification but also the issues that would come ...
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Editor’s Note: June 2019 Issue
Today we share a preview of our June 2019 issue, reprinting here the editor's note by Judy Giesberg. To access these articles, you can purchase a copy of the issue or subscribe to the journal. It will also be available (in June) on Project Muse. Readers of this issue will ...
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Congressman Charles Hays and the Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution dramatically transformed American society during the Reconstruction era. The amendments abolished slavery, established the concepts of birthright citizenship and equal protection of the laws, and granted all men the right to vote, regardless of color. For most members of the ...
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“Though Declared to be American Citizens”: The Colored Convention Movement, Black Citizenship, and the Fourteenth Amendment
Today we share the second installment of our Fourteenth Amendment roundtable. You can find the guest editor's introduction here, and the first contribution here. Subsequent contributions, including the conclusion, are available here, here, and here. Past struggles over the meaning of citizenship speak to us today. The question of ...
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The Roots of Reconstruction
Today we share the first contribution to our scholarly roundtable on the Fourteenth Amendment. The guest editor's introduction and conclusion can be found here and here. Subsequent posts can be found here, here, and here. In the decades before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, African American activists helped ...
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