African Americans: Protected By The Constitution?

The original U.S. Constitution did not mention African Americans, and slavery, which defined Black people as property, shaped the United States since its founding. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was designed to assure the enjoyment of civil rights for African Americans and protect them from discrimination by the states. It also provided birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law for all citizens, regardless of citizenship status. The 15th Amendment, enacted in 1870, granted African American men the right to vote. Despite these amendments, African Americans continued to face discrimination and disenfranchisement, particularly in the South, leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which abolished remaining deterrents to their right to vote.

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The 14th Amendment

The amendment includes the "equal protection clause," which states that no person within a state's jurisdiction shall be denied "the equal protection of the laws." This clause was intended to prevent state governments from discriminating against African Americans and has played a key role in landmark civil rights cases. It also amended the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution, stating that population counts would be based on the "whole number of persons" in a state, ensuring that all residents, regardless of race, would be counted as one whole person.

Voting rights

The struggle for African Americans' voting rights in the United States dates back to the nation's founding. The original U.S. Constitution did not define voting rights for citizens, and until 1870, only white men were allowed to vote.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former slaves, and guaranteed "equal protection under the laws" to all citizens. However, this did not automatically translate into the right to vote for African Americans, and they continued to face discrimination and disenfranchisement.

The 15th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870, was a significant step towards addressing this injustice. It granted African American men the right to vote, stating that voting rights could not be "denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This amendment was celebrated in Black communities and abolitionist societies, with many regarding it as the completion of the Civil War's goals and a "second birth" for the nation.

However, despite these constitutional protections, African Americans still faced significant barriers to exercising their voting rights. Southern states implemented various discriminatory practices, including literacy tests, "grandfather clauses" (which restricted voting rights to those whose male ancestors had voted before a certain date), and poll taxes, effectively disenfranchising a large number of Black voters.

In response to these ongoing barriers, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. This Act provided federal enforcement to remove discriminatory practices, authorized federal supervision of voter registration, and prevented states from changing voting requirements or district boundaries without federal review. The Act has been amended and renewed several times since, with the most recent extension in 1982.

Despite these efforts, the struggle for voting rights continues. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, making it easier for states to implement discriminatory voting practices. Nonetheless, African Americans have made significant strides in political participation, with Black voter turnout exceeding white voter turnout for the first time in history during the 2012 reelection of Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president.

Birthright citizenship

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to every child born "within the jurisdiction of the United States". The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside".

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1866 to amend the 3/5th clause in the Constitution, which stated that population counts would be based on the "whole number of persons" in a state, and that all people would be counted equally. It also protected the right to vote for all male citizens aged 21 or older, regardless of race. The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to assure the coloured race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that are enjoyed by white persons, and to give that race the protection of the government in that enjoyment. It gave citizenship and the privileges of citizenship to persons of colour, and denied to any state the power to withhold from them the equal protection of the laws.

The birthright citizenship principle of the Fourteenth Amendment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1898 when they ruled that Wong Kim Ark, born in the United States to Chinese parents, was a citizen despite his parents' non-citizen status. This set a precedent in the interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, cementing birthright citizenship for children of all immigrants.

In recent years, there have been attempts to restrict birthright citizenship, primarily by denying it to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced that he was considering ending birthright citizenship, and on his first day in office in 2025, he issued an executive order purporting to deny birthright citizenship to children of undocumented parents or those whose parents are in the country on temporary status. Litigation ensued, and the order's implementation has been blocked by the courts.

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Police brutality

The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed by Congress in 1866, was designed to assure African Americans of the enjoyment of all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons. It also provided equal protection of the law for all citizens and banned racial discrimination in voting.

Despite this, police brutality against African Americans remains a pervasive issue in the US. The killing of George Floyd in 2020 sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the country, yet data shows that police killings of Black Americans have increased since then. Young Black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, and Black people, who account for 13% of the US population, made up 26% of those killed by police in 2022.

There are several pathways through which police brutality disproportionately affects the health of Black Americans. These include fatal injuries, adverse physiological responses, racist public reactions, financial strain, and systematic disempowerment. Public health scholars have been urged to investigate the relationship between police brutality and health and to advocate for policies that address racial health inequities.

The American Public Health Association has called on federal, state, and local governments to demilitarize the police, decriminalize minor offenses, end racialized stop-and-frisk practices, and address the root causes of instability in Black communities. However, the police have often resisted calls for change, and the systems that maintain excess morbidity and mortality among Black Americans remain largely intact.

The Civil Rights Act

The Act prohibited discrimination in public places, outlawed segregation in businesses such as theatres, restaurants, and hotels, and banned discriminatory practices in employment. It also provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. The Act was designed to address voting rights, public accommodations, school desegregation, and nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs.

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