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A return to Jim Crow [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-02
Yes, in practice, Jim Crow laws undermined the rights guaranteed by birthright citizenship, even if they didn’t explicitly revoke it.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, guarantees that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States.” This was a direct response to the Dred Scott decision, which had denied citizenship to Black Americans
How Jim Crow laws conflicted with this?
While Jim Crow laws didn’t legally strip Black Americans of their citizenship, they systematically denied them the rights and protections that citizenship was supposed to ensure, such as:
• Equal access to public education, transportation, and facilities
• The right to vote, through poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation
• Legal protections, including fair trials and due process
• Economic opportunities and property rights
In essence, these laws created a two-tiered system where Black citizens were treated as second-class, despite their constitutional status.
The contradiction between the promise of the 14th Amendment and the reality of Jim Crow segregation highlights how legal citizenship doesn’t always guarantee full participation in civic life. It took nearly a century—and the Civil Rights Movement—to begin dismantling those barriers.
now we have a fat orange bastard who wants to take us back to a time where people can have their rights taken away and their place in the country regulated to a second class category.
Place entire communities into that category. You limit their freedoms. You limit their abilities to defend themselves. You take away their ability to fight back through the representation in the courts and by running for office.
that’s the Republican dream and the Supreme Court is helping them.
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