by Nomad
As civil rights lawyers will tell you, the 14th Amendment has been a bulwark against institutionalized racism in America.
Ratified in the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, the amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly-enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” civil and legal rights for Black Americans were- (at least, in theory, if not in practice) guaranteed by federal law.
In the 1950s and 60s, it was to prove a reliable foundation upon which to abolish the second-class status for African-Americans in the Deep South.
