Anunnaki Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph. D.
TRUMP & MILLER’S ASSAULT ON BLACK VOTING TRIES TO REINSTATE THE DRED SCOTT DECISION DENYING EX-SLAVES’ VOTE
by Enki updated on Leave a Comment on TRUMP & MILLER’S ASSAULT ON BLACK VOTING TRIES TO REINSTATE THE DRED SCOTT DECISION DENYING EX-SLAVES’ VOTE
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
TRUMPERS TOUT THE SUPREME COURT’S DRED SCOTT DECISION TO DENY BLACKS CITIZENSHIP
From Dred Scott to Trump: the 169-year struggle over birthright citizenship in the U.S.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP in the US came about as a way of granting citizenship after the American Civil War to the large population of formerly enslaved Black people. The law intended for Black Americans created hundreds of thousands of new US citizens born to immigrant parents every year.
On the first day of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, he signed an executive order about the old American rule that anyone born here is a citizen.
Since most Black people who voted in America voted for Democrats against Trump MAGA Republicans, and because he and Miller (Trump’s advisor and author of Project 20250), who are White Supremacists, wanted Blacks excluded from voting.
Trump’s order stated that the rule that a person’s birth on American soil secures their citizenship as citizens of the United States comes from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, should apply to the children of people in the United States illegally, temporarily, or who were descendants of slaves.
Trump lawyers argued that Blacks were considered property — not people — so their descendants did not qualify as American citizens by birth; their parents were property, not people — sounds stupid, but that’s their argument.
Within a few weeks, multiple federal judges blocked that order—the resolution was temporary. The ultimate outcome, likely decided by the Supreme Court, whose majority owes its lifelong tenure to Trump, will probably support Trump, to whom they owe their lifelong tenure on the Court.
Birthright citizenship in the US came about as a way of granting citizenship after the American Civil War to the large population of formerly enslaved Black people. The law intended for Black Americans who created hundreds of thousands of new US citizens born to immigrant parents every year.
Within a few weeks, multiple federal judges blocked that order—but the resolution was temporary, and the ultimate outcome, likely decided by the Supreme Court, whose majority is beholden to and obedient to Trump, will probably support Trump, to whom they owe their lifelong tenure on the Court.
Birthright citizenship in the US came about as a way of granting citizenship after the American Civil War to the large population of formerly enslaved Black people. The law intended for Black Americans created hundreds of thousands of new US citizens born to immigrant parents every year.
Cooperative consciousness considerers argued that all people born in a country can contribute to its culture, regardless of their ancestors’ culture.
Domination devotees declared: Officials authorize who belongs and who does not.
These competing approaches shaped American citizenship since the country’s founding.
Enslaved Africans and their descendants challenged the authority of officials, slaveholders, courts, and lawmakers to treat them as property rather than people.
After the Civil War, Congress established birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment to protect ex-slaves, their descendants, and also the American-born children of immigrants.
In 2025, President Donald Trump challenged that understanding.
He ordered federal agencies to deny birthright citizenship to certain children born in the United States to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present.
On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation in Trump v. Barbara.
To understand what was at stake, we must return to the original struggle over who counted as an American.
1787–1857: AMERICA INHERITED CITIZENSHIP BY BIRTH—BUT DENIED EQUAL MEMBERSHIP
When delegates drafted the United States Constitution in 1787, they did not establish a comprehensive definition of citizenship at birth.
American law inherited an important principle from English common law: jus soli, the right of the soil.
Under this principle, a person born within a sovereign’s territory ordinarily acquired membership in that political community.
Another principle, jus sanguinis, the right of blood, derived citizenship from one’s parents.
Both ideas influenced the development of nationality laws.
But the United States also maintained slavery. Enslaved people were compelled to work, could be sold, and were denied fundamental freedoms. Slaveholders asserted legal authority over their labor, movement, families, and lives.
Free Black Americans challenged discriminatory laws, petitioned governments, founded institutions, and claimed citizenship. Some voted in states that recognized their political rights.
Thus, citizenship was never simply a settled inheritance from England. People fought over whether birth, ancestry, race, freedom, or political power determined membership.
Free Black community organizers proclaimed, We were born here. We work here, raise families here, and contribute to our communities. Don’t use our ancestry as an excuse to deny us membership in the country we helped build.”
Dixicrats, indoctrinated in the Anunnaki Domination Deal, declared, Political membership belongs to those our laws recognize. Birth alone cannot make us share authority with everyone living in America. For people of this ilk, citizenship is a privilege the powerful grant, not protection from them.
1857: THE DRED SCOTT DECISION DENIED BLACK AMERICANS NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP
Dred Scott was an enslaved man who had lived with his enslaver in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited.
He and his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, pursued freedom suits in Missouri.
They argued that their residence in free jurisdictions entitled them to freedom.
Their litigation eventually reached the United States Supreme Court.
On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Court’s majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The Court denied Scott’s claim to federal citizenship and declared that people of African descent whose ancestors had been enslaved were excluded from the national political community contemplated by the Constitution.
The decision also held that Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories, invalidating the Missouri Compromise’s territorial restriction.
The ruling threatened the citizenship claims of free Black Americans as well as the freedom claims of enslaved people.
Taney’s opinion treated racial ancestry as a basis for denying national citizenship.
Yet Black Americans had already organized against slavery, demanded recognition, and challenged the proposition that the country belonged exclusively to whites.
The Dred Scott decision intensified the sectional conflict that would culminate in the Civil War. It deepened the dispute over slavery’s expansion and the authority of the federal government.
Harriet Scott testified, We lived where slavery was prohibited. The law must recognize our freedom?”
But Judge Taney ruled, “The Constitution does not give the federal government authority to make your claim superior to the property rights recognized by slaveholding states.”
Enraged abolitionists said, The Court classifies people as property, then uses their classification to deny them people’s rights. That’s just power, not justice
1857–1865: ABOLITIONISTS RESISTED SLAVERY; JOHN BROWN ATTACKED HARPER’S FERRY
The Dred Scott decision confirmed abolitionists’ fears that slaveholding interests dominated national institutions.
The violent Abolitionist John Brown, who had killed proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in 1856, asked Frederick Douglass to join him.
Brown planned to seize the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. Douglas declined, but on October 16, 1859, Brown and his followers, both Black and White, attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia, now West Virginia.
Brown hoped to seize weapons and encourage an uprising among enslaved people.
Instead, federal forces commanded by Robert E. Lee captured him after a violent confrontation.
Brown was tried in Charles Town, Virginia, convicted of treason against Virginia, murder, and inciting enslaved people to rebel.
He was executed on December 2, 1859.
Brown’s raid failed militarily but intensified national debate.
Many white Southerners feared further uprisings.
Abolitionists disagreed over Brown’s methods, while some regarded his willingness to die opposing slavery as a moral challenge to the nation.
Abraham Lincoln opposed Brown’s violence but also opposed the expansion of slavery.
He rejected the notion that the raid represented the Republican Party’s program.
Virginia slaveowners, addicted to the Anunnaki-derived domination consciousness, celebrated, saying, Brown has attacked our state, threatened our property, encouraged rebellion, and deserved to die.”
Partnership partisans, though ignorant of the Anunnaki origin of their attitudes in the teaching of the Great Anunnaki Goddess Ninmah, countered: “The deeper question is why human freedom has been classified as a threat to property.”
861–1870: THE CIVIL WAR DESTROYED SLAVERY; RECONSTRUCTION ESTABLISHED CITIZENSHIP
When Southern states seceded in 1860–1861, the central dispute concerned slavery and its future.
The Civil War began in April 1861. President Abraham Lincoln initially emphasized preserving the Union.
Emancipation, however, became an increasingly central Union war policy.
Freed slaves escaped plantations, assisted Union forces, and served in the military.
The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, declaring enslaved people in designated areas in rebellion against the United States free.
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime following conviction.
LINCOLN CHOSE DIXIE CRAT ANDREW JOHNSON AS HIS VEEP; JOHNSON, SUCCEEDING LINCOLN, OBSTRUCTED RECONSTRUCTION
Lincoln accepted Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a Southern Democrat and former slaveholder, as his vice-presidential running mate in 1864 because Johnson had remained loyal to the Union even after Tennessee seceded in 1861. Lincoln and his Republican allies hoped that placing a Southern Unionist Democrat on their National Union Party ticket would attract War Democrats, reassure loyal Southerners, and strengthen Lincoln’s reelection campaign.
General Grant, Commander of Union forces in the Civil War, of course, defeated the South, but after Southern sympathizer Booth murdered Lincoln, Lincoln, to show tolerance for Southerners, had chosen the racist Southerner, Andrew Johnson, as his Vice President.
After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, President Johnson pursued a Reconstruction policy that restored political authority to many former Confederates while offering little protection to formerly enslaved Black Americans. He granted extensive pardons to former rebels, permitted Southern governments to enact discriminatory Black Codes, opposed Black voting rights, vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau legislation intended to assist formerly enslaved people, and vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established federal citizenship protections.
CONGRESS OVERRODE PRESIDENT JOHNSON’S VETO TO ENACT THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866
Congressional Republicans overrode his vetoes and advanced the Fourteenth Amendment to constitutionally protect citizenship. Johnson also resisted congressional Reconstruction Acts requiring Southern states to establish new governments and recognize Black men’s political rights.
Johnson’s confrontation with Congress culminated in his 1868 impeachment; the Senate acquitted him by one vote. Thus, Lincoln’s wartime effort to unite Northern Republicans and Southern Unionists unexpectedly placed a defender of white political supremacy in the presidency at the critical moment when emancipation needed to become enforceable civil and political equality.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, establishing citizenship for people born in the United States and not subject to a foreign power, with an exclusion concerning certain Native Americans.
President Johnson vetoed the legislation. He objected to its implications for federal authority and questioned citizenship for groups including Chinese immigrants.
Congress overrode his veto.
14th AMENDMENT
Congress then proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, which established a constitutional guarantee of citizenship. Amendment 14 stated, “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 amendment did not define citizenship by race or former enslavement.
15th AMENDMENT
The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited federal and state governments from denying voting rights because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Together, the 14th and 15th Amendments transformed American constitutional law.
However, women still lacked a nationwide constitutional guarantee against sex-based voting discrimination.
Many Black citizens still faced intimidation, exclusion, and disenfranchisement.
Black Union Veterans also complained, We helped preserve this nation. Freedom must include our legal recognition, protection, and a voice in government.”
Northern state congressmen warned. If states can deny citizenship to people born under their authority, they can undermine emancipation through new forms of legal exclusion. Former Confederate politicians countered that the federal government should not dictate state politics.
1868–1898: CHINESE IMMIGRANTS CHALLENGED EXCLUSION; WONG KIM ARK DEFENDED HIS CITIZENSHIP
The Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship language applied beyond the formerly enslaved population whose exclusion had made constitutional reform urgent.
During congressional debates, lawmakers discussed whether American-born children of Chinese immigrants would become citizens.
The 14th Amendment would extend citizenship to children born in the United States to immigrant parents who were subject to American jurisdiction.
Anti-Chinese hostility intensified during the nineteenth century, particularly in California.
In California, Chinese immigrants worked in gold mines, built railroads, operated laundries, and established businesses.
White workers sometimes blamed them for competition over jobs and wages during economic downturns.
Employers exploited divisions between workers. Politicians encouraged racial resentment.
Chinese immigrants faced discriminatory laws, mob violence, and exclusion from political participation.
In 1882, Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The Act restricted Chinese labor immigration.
It reinforced existing prohibitions against Chinese immigrants becoming naturalized American citizens.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THEIR CHILDREN BORN IN THE UNITED STATES?
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco around 1873 to Chinese immigrant parents who lived and worked in America.
After visiting China, he returned to San Francisco in 1895, where Immigration agents ruled him a non-citizen and told him he lacked citizenship rights in America.
Wong insisted he was already an American citizen because he was born in the United States.
In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment protected his citizenship. The decision established that an American-born child of Chinese immigrant parents, domiciled in the United States and subject to its laws, was a citizen by birth despite restrictions on the parents’ naturalization.
Anti-Chinese Authoritarian, Anunnaki-imprinted politicians fulminated, Chinese laborers compete with American workers, accept lower wages, and remain loyal to a foreign country. Their children should not automatically become Americans.”
WONG KIM ARK retorted with the partnership preference of Anunnaki Goddess Ninmah, I was born in San Francisco. I’m an American Citizen.
Ark’s attorney argued that the Fourteenth Amendment protects citizenship by birth.
A child’s citizenship does not depend on whether the parents qualify for naturalization.
In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that the government wrongly denied his citizenship.
The decision established that the American-born child of Chinese immigrant parents domiciled in the United States and subject to its laws was a citizen by birth, despite restrictions on the parents’ naturalization.
Anti-Chinese politicians, echoing the ancient racism and domination ideology of the Anunnaki leadership, fulminated, “Chinese laborers compete with American workers, accept lower wages, and remain loyal to a foreign country. Their children should not automatically become Americans.”
Ark responded with the wisdom of unity, community, and partnership espoused by Cretan Goddess Ninmah, “I was born in San Francisco. America is my country; my parents’ birthplace is irrelevant to my citizenship. His lawyer added, Wong Kim Ark is an American citizen by birth. A child’s citizenship does not depend on whether the parents qualify for naturalization.”
In 1898, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Court said Ark was a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision affirmed the common-law principle of citizenship by birthplace. It demonstrated that racial exclusion in immigration law did not erase the citizenship of a person born in the United States who qualified under the Fourteenth Amendment.
1898–2024: CITIZENSHIP SURVIVED, BUT EQUAL VOTING RIGHTS REQUIRED CONTINUING STRUGGLE
The Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark established strong protections for birthright citizenship.
Yet citizenship alone did not ensure equal participation in American democracy.
After Reconstruction, Southern governments developed poll taxes, literacy tests, discriminatory registration systems, and other devices to exclude Black citizens from voting.
White supremacist violence reinforced these restrictions.
Black Americans resisted through community organizations, lawsuits, education campaigns, protests, and electoral organizing.
The twentieth-century civil rights movement helped secure the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Voting Rights Act addressed barriers that discriminated against political participation. It did not itself establish birthright citizenship.
Click this URL for a video on Chinese Exclusion: https://www.pbs.org/video/chinese-exclusion-act-wong-kim-ark-6ynevh/
Some lawmakers proposed restricting birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
Supporters of restrictions argued that citizenship should not automatically follow from birth when parents lacked permanent legal status.
Opponents argued that the Constitution’s citizenship guarantee protects children independently of their parents’ immigration status.
The underlying disagreement concerned whether national membership should be determined primarily by birthplace or by additional qualifications connected to parental status.
Dominators and Dixicrats demanded that each state set and enforce its own election qualifications.
Black civil rights organizers asserted, Citizenship is meaningless politically if officials can prevent citizens from registering and voting.
Voting qualifications become instruments of exclusion when they are deliberately designed or discriminatorily administered to keep particular citizens from the ballot.”
Dominators and Dixicrats disagreed with the Civil Righters. The dominators demanded that each state set and enforce election qualifications.
2025: TRUMP CHALLENGED BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP; LAWYERS RETURNED TO RECONSTRUCTION HISTORY
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.
The order directed federal agencies not to recognize birthright citizenship for specified children born in the United States when their mothers were unlawfully present or temporarily lawfully present, and their fathers were neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents.
The administration argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” did not include the children covered by its order.
Administration lawyers argued for a narrow interpretation of citizenship for children of certain noncitizen parents.
Opponents argued that the administration’s interpretation conflicted with the Fourteenth Amendment, Wong Kim Ark, federal citizenship law, and longstanding government practice.
Civil rights advocates also compared the administration’s reasoning with earlier attempts to decide which American-born populations should be excluded from national membership.
2026: THE SUPREME COURT REAFFIRMED BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
THE SUPREME COURT REJECTED TRUMP’S CHALLENGE TO BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
The order directed federal agencies not to recognize birthright citizenship for specified children born in the United States when their mothers were unlawfully present or temporarily lawfully present, and their fathers were neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents
The administration argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” did not include the children covered by its order
Administration lawyers argued for a narrow interpretation of citizenship for children of certain noncitizen parents.
Opponents argued that the administration’s interpretation conflicted with the Fourteenth Amendment, Wong Kim Ark, federal citizenship law, and longstanding government practice.
Civil rights advocates also compared the administration’s reasoning with earlier attempts to decide which American-born populations should be excluded from national membership.ly present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Court’s opinion. The decision examined English common law, the history of Dred Scott, Reconstruction legislation, the Fourteenth Amendment, and Wong Kim Ark.
The Court rejected the administration’s interpretation of the citizenship clause.
The justices did not all agree about the constitutional question. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concluded that federal statute prohibited the order but disagreed with the majority’s constitutional interpretation. Other dissenting justices advanced narrower understandings of birthright citizenship.
The ruling did not eliminate every political disagreement over immigration, citizenship, or voting procedures.
But it established that Trump’s executive order could not deny citizenship to the children it targeted.
From Dred Scott and Harriet Scott’s pursuit of freedom, through Black abolitionists and Reconstruction lawmakers, to Wong Kim Ark’s successful citizenship claim, American history records repeated struggles over who may be recognized as a member of the political community.
From the perspective of partnership consciousness, the enduring question is whether institutions protect people’s equal standing or allow powerful groups to distribute membership according to ancestry and political preference.
The constitutional history does not resolve every disagreement over immigration policy. It does establish that presidents cannot simply rewrite citizenship rules by decree.
1898–2024: CITIZENSHIP SURVIVED, BUT EQUAL VOTING RIGHTS REQUIRED CONTINUING STRUGGLE
the 14th Amendment made Americans citizens; the 15th fifteenth promised black men the vote
In 1898, the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark reaffirmed a fundamental constitutional principle: A child born in the United States to immigrant parents who were living here and subject to American jurisdiction was an American citizen by birth, even when the parents themselves could not become naturalized citizens.
But being recognized as an American citizen did not guarantee the practical ability to participate in American democracy.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established national birthright citizenship and guaranteed equal protection of the laws.
The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited denying voting rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
These amendments promised to transform the political order that had permitted slavery.
During Reconstruction, Black men registered to vote, served on juries, held public office, and helped establish public schools and new state governments.
But white supremacist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, employed intimidation, beatings, murder, and economic retaliation to destroy Black political participation.
The federal government initially resisted this terror. President Ulysses S. Grant supported Enforcement Acts that enabled federal prosecution of those who violently interfered with elections.
After federal Reconstruction ended in 1877, however, Southern political leaders progressively restored white political dominance.
1877–1940: JIM CROW GOVERNMENTS KEPT BLACK CITIZENS FROM THE BALLOT BOX
Southern governments developed elaborate systems to prevent Black citizens from exercising the voting rights that the Constitution supposedly guaranteed.
They imposed poll taxes that poor people could not afford, literacy tests administered arbitrarily by white officials, complicated registration procedures, and grandfather clauses that protected many white voters while excluding Black citizens.
Some jurisdictions used all-white Democratic primaries to exclude Black voters from the contests that effectively determined who would hold office.
A Black farmer who attempted to register could lose his employment, credit, rented land, or livelihood.
A Black teacher could be dismissed. A Black business owner could face boycotts. A Black family could be threatened with violence.
These were not merely isolated acts of prejudice. They formed an interconnected system of political domination.
Black Americans remained citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, but millions were prevented from exercising meaningful political power.
1898–1952: ASIAN AMERICANS ALSO CONFRONTED EXCLUSION
Wong Kim Ark’s victory protected his citizenship, but it did not eliminate discrimination against Chinese immigrants or other Asian Americans.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted Chinese immigration. Federal law continued to prevent most Chinese immigrants from naturalizing until 1943.
Although American-born children of Chinese immigrants possessed birthright citizenship, their immigrant parents often remained excluded from naturalization.
Other Asian immigrant communities confronted comparable restrictions.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 finally eliminated race as a legal qualification for naturalization, although discriminatory immigration quotas continued.
1920–1965: WOMEN, NATIVE AMERICANS, AND BLACK ORGANIZERS EXPANDED DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION
The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, prohibited denying the vote on account of sex.
Women had organized for generations through petitions, marches, public speaking, civil disobedience, and political campaigns.
Yet many Black women in the South remained effectively disenfranchised by the same discriminatory restrictions imposed upon Black men.
In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, extending American citizenship to Native Americans who had not already obtained it. Nevertheless, some states continued excluding Native citizens from elections through discriminatory laws and practices.
Meanwhile, Black communities developed institutions of resistance.
Churches provided meeting places.
Teachers organized citizenship classes.
Lawyers challenged discriminatory laws. Newspapers publicized abuses.
Labor organizers and community leaders connected economic justice with political rights.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, pursued legal challenges and public campaigns against racial discrimination.
In 1944, the Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. Allwright struck down the exclusion of Black voters from Texas Democratic primaries.
Each victory weakened one mechanism of exclusion, but others survived.
1955–1965: CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZERS CONFRONTED VIOLENCE AND FORCED FEDERAL ACTION
The modern civil rights movement transformed the struggle for voting rights into a national confrontation.
Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 helped spark a mass boycott that brought Martin Luther King Jr. and other local organizers national prominence.
Students organized sit-ins. Freedom Riders challenged segregation in interstate travel. Churches, unions, and community organizations mobilized volunteers.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the NAACP contributed different strategies to the movement.
In Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer confronted intimidation and violence while organizing Black voters.
Her 1964 testimony before the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee exposed the political exclusion practiced in her state.
During Freedom Summer in 1964, civil rights organizations conducted voter-registration drives and established Freedom Schools.
Three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were murdered in Mississippi.
Their deaths exposed the deadly resistance facing those who challenged white political control.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 attacked segregation in public accommodations, employment discrimination, and certain discriminatory voting practices.
But it did not eliminate the principal barriers to Black voter registration.
AMENDMENT 24
The Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, prohibited poll taxes in federal elections.
Then came Selma.
On March 7, 1965, peaceful demonstrators attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, encountered state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Officers attacked marchers with clubs and tear gas.
The violence, broadcast nationally, became known as BLOODY SUNDAY.
John Lewis, a young SNCC leader, suffered a fractured skull.
The images helped mobilize national support for stronger federal voting protections.
President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress and urged passage of voting-rights legislation.
On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
1965–2006: THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT CHANGED AMERICAN POLITICS
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting and established federal mechanisms to enforce it.
It suspended literacy tests in covered jurisdictions, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters, and required jurisdictions with documented histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing election procedures.
That advance-approval requirement, known as preclearance, was designed to prevent discriminatory changes from harming voters.
By the end of 1965, approximately 250,000 additional Black voters had registered.
Black citizens increasingly participated in elections, organized political coalitions, and won public offices previously closed to them.
In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections that state poll taxes violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Congress subsequently extended and strengthened the Voting Rights Act.
The 1975 amendments expanded protections for certain language-minority voters, including provisions for bilingual election assistance.
The United States moved closer to the democratic ideal that citizenship should provide an effective opportunity for political participation.
Struggles over district boundaries, registration requirements, election administration, and political representation continued.
2013–2024: THE SUPREME COURT RESTRICTED ONE VOTING-RIGHTS SAFEGUARD WHILE PRESERVING OTHERS
In 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder by a 5–4 vote.
The majority invalidated the coverage formula used to determine which jurisdictions required federal preclearance before changing their election rules.
Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the formula relied on outdated conditions and no longer reflected changes in American voting practices.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, arguing that eliminating an effective preventive safeguard risked permitting discrimination to return.
The decision did not repeal the Voting Rights Act or invalidate its nationwide prohibition against racially discriminatory voting practices.
But the Voting Rights Act made the previous preclearance system largely inoperative unless Congress enacted a new coverage formula.
States subsequently adopted or debated voter-identification requirements, registration restrictions, changes to early voting, and other election procedures.
Supporters argued that these measures promoted election security, consistent administration, or public confidence.
Opponents argued that some measures imposed disproportionate burdens on Black, Latino, Native American, elderly, disabled, and low-income voters.
In 2021, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee upheld two Arizona voting restrictions and articulated standards for evaluating certain claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In 2023, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama’s congressional redistricting plan violated Section 2 because it unlawfully diluted Black voting strength.
These decisions demonstrated that federal voting-rights protections remained enforceable, but their scope and application were contested.
2024: CITIZENSHIP AND THE VOTE REMAINED DISTINCT CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS
By the 2024 presidential election, Americans still disputed voter registration, district boundaries, ballot access, and election administration.
The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship.
The Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments, together with federal voting-rights legislation, established additional protections against particular forms of voting discrimination.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not create birthright citizenship. It sought to make eligible citizens’ voting rights enforceable.
Likewise, the Wong Kim Ark decision did not guarantee that every American citizen could vote regardless of age, residence, or other lawful qualifications.
Their shared history reveals a recurring struggle: whether citizenship provides meaningful membership in the political community or whether laws and administrative practices exclude people from exercising the rights that membership entails.
DOMINATION VERSUS PARTNERSHIP: WHO GETS TO PARTICIPATE IN GOVERNMENT?
The history of American citizenship and voting rights illustrates the tension between domination and partnership consciousness.
Under domination, those who control institutions concentrate political power. Laws, administrative procedures, economic pressures, and sometimes violence can prevent other citizens from sharing authority.
Under partnership, people recognize one another as members of a political community entitled to participate in collective decisions.
Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women, and their allies organized across generations to challenge exclusion and expand democratic participation.
Their achievements did not end political conflict, but they changed the meaning and practice of American democracy.
The central lesson is that constitutional citizenship establishes membership, while effective voting rights help make that membership politically meaningful.
History from 1898 through 2024 shows how Americans repeatedly struggled to close the gap between the two.
CONCLUSION: DOMINATION DETERMINES WHO BELONGS; PARTNERSHIP RECOGNIZES PEOPLE’S EQUAL STANDING
The struggle over American citizenship has never concerned legal wording alone.
It has involved enslaved people demanding freedom, free Black Americans claiming political membership, abolitionists confronting slavery, immigrants challenging exclusion, and citizens organizing against discriminatory voting laws.
The history also reveals disagreements among people who opposed slavery and discrimination. John Brown and Frederick Douglass differed over whether to use revolutionary violence.
Reconstruction lawmakers debated the boundaries of federal authority.
Our partnership framework distinguishes cooperation grounded in mutual recognition from systems that distribute rights according to inherited status or concentrated political power.
The Fourteenth Amendment emerged from a devastating war over slavery and the status of human beings.
Every generation must ask how faithfully American institutions will apply that guarantee while respecting the equal dignity of the people they govern.
KEYWORDS
Dred Scott, Harriet Scott, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Roger B. Taney, John Brown, Harpers Ferry, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, slavery, abolition, emancipation, Reconstruction, citizenship, birthright citizenship, Fourteenth Amendment, Thirteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act of 1866, Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong Kim Ark, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Project 2025, Trump v. Barbara, Supreme Court 2026, immigration, constitutional rights, racial discrimination, domination consciousness, partnership consciousness, cooperative society, Sasha Alex Lessin, EnkiSpeaks.
HASHTAGS
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