The Day by Day History of the
14th Amendment to the Constitution Was Ratified
On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the
United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment grants
citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United
States" which included former slaves who had just been freed
after the Civil War. The amendment had been rejected by most
Southern states but was ratified by the required three-fourths
of the states. Known as the "Reconstruction Amendment," it
forbids any state to deny any person "life, liberty or property,
without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
groups tried to use the 14th Amendment to further their causes.
Women attempted to use it to proclaim their right to vote, and
African Americans tried to use it as well. On May 18, 1896, the
Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that
"separate but equal" facilities were considered sufficient to
satisfy the 14th Amendment. It wasn't until May 17, 1954,
however, that the Court reversed the Plessy decision, bringing
the era of government-sanctioned segregation to an end.
It was the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, which finally gave
African Americans the right to vote. It states that "the right
of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In practice,
however, it took almost 100 more years and the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 to remove barriers such as poll taxes,
literacy tests, and intimidation that prevented African
Americans and other people of color from freely exercising their
right to vote. Note that the 15th amendment makes no mention of
sex. It was not until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920
that women were explicitly given the vote.