Since 1868 during Federal Reconstruction the United States Congress ratified the 14th amendment to provide constitutional protections for formerly enslaved Africans
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Tuesday July 21, 2026
Political Review
In a 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court struck down an executive order issued by President Donald Trump during the early days of his second non-consecutive term.
Trump, who has built his political reputation on racial bias and discrimination against immigrants and nationally oppressed peoples of color, has sought to undermine the gains made as a result of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement of the post-World War II period.
By attempting to strike down an important clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) tendency are seeking opportunities to strip the citizenship rights of millions living in the country. If they are successful in nullifying the 14th Amendment, the demographic trends leading to the growth of people of color communities would be halted.
These actions by the White House are representative of the racist domestic and foreign policies of the administration. In addition to attacks on immigrants, the civil rights of those born in the US and recognized as “citizens” have been under serious attack. Other executive orders and Supreme Court decisions have already eliminated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Affirmative Action and the right to research, study and display the actual historical development of the US have been declared unlawful.
The Trump v. Barbara decision upheld the Section One of the 14th Amendment which declares:
“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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (https://constitution.
This amendment was designed to strengthen the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which was a broad law passed by Congress to provide fundamental rights to Africans in the US who were enslaved by the British and later the Americans from 1619 to 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified. During and after the Civil War a debate sharpened among the ruling class over what would be the status of African people.
The Dred Scott Decision of 1857 was a vicious response to the formerly enslaved African, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet of Missouri, who sued for their freedom since they had lived for some time in the non-slaveholding territory of Wisconsin. The outcome of the case had implications for the African people as a whole since they were utilizing various forms of resistance to win their freedom from bondage.
A series of rebellions and a burgeoning abolitionist movement threatened the supremacy of the slavocracy. In 1856, reports of slave rebellions in the South created panic among the planters in an election year where the question of slavery was being debated.
According to one source:
“Northern politics influenced the last major insurrection scares of the antebellum South; the growth of the Republican Party was the obvious stimulus. Shortly after the 1856 elections, rumors of a Christmas insurrection spread throughout the South. Tennessee became the center of the scare, but in all slave states except Delaware and Maryland there were reverberations of panic… The clearest evidence about the killing of Blacks in the 1856 panic exists in Texas and especially Tennessee, in the latter case chiefly industrial slaves, who worked in its many small iron furnaces. The origins of the plot were obscurely tied to the Fremont canvass: ‘the negroes, hearing so much of Fremont, began to think that if he was elected, they would all be free.’ … Rumors piled up. A keg of dynamite was found under a church near Louisa furnace, though no thought was given as to how this keg was to aid the plot. Several ‘white minister’ instigators were invented, and one Black suspect, who died halfway through his sentence of 900 lashes, turned out to be, rioters claimed, a white man who had ‘dyed’ himself. In the usual fashion, slaves were rounded up ‘and under pain of severe punishment or death were made to confess,’ and confessions proved ‘identical in every particular,’ of course. Some fifty-six blacks were hanged, at least nine-tenths of them slaves; two or more, in addition to the ‘dyed’ white man, were beaten to death. After the first hangings in Dover, Tennessee, many victims were beheaded, and, hoisting ‘the ghastly gory relics’ on poles, citizens paraded the streets in triumph…’” (https://civilwartalk.com/
It would only take another four years for the Civil War to erupt. The Confederate insurrection devastated large areas of the US. The outcomes of the so-called “War Between the States” remains, some 160 years later as debates continue over the status of the formerly enslaved along with immigrants from geopolitical regions where formerly colonized peoples resided.
A Return to Dred Scott in the 21st Century
The Dred Scott Decision of 1857 has been described by many legal scholars as the lowest point of the legal trajectory of the Supreme Court. This interpretation of the Constitution upheld the rights of slaveholders to deny the fundamental human rights of African people.
In an archival review of the decision notes that:
“On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney read the majority opinion of the Court, which stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The opinion also stated that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a federal territory. This decision moved the nation a step closer to the Civil War. The decision of Scott v. Sandford, considered by many legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court, was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States.” (https://www.archives.gov/
African Americans living in the 21st century must realize that the Trump v. Barbara case does not only apply to those children whose parents were born outside the US. It is important to recognize that during the 19th century when the Atlantic Slave Trade was still operational, both legally and illegally, many Africans living in bondage had parents who were born in Africa where they were captured and brought to the US and other areas in the Caribbean, Central and South America.
Therefore, the striking down of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause could easily be rolled back to the 1857 Dred Scott Decision. Even today in the 21st century, Africans are disproportionately represented in the lower ranks of the proletariat suffering from extreme labor exploitation, impoverishment, racist violence and incarceration.
Constitutional Amendments and Civil Rights Laws Remain Under Threat
Even after the Civil War and Reconstruction, another series of Supreme Court decisions in effect overturned the important clauses of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment along with the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875. The Supreme Court Decisions of 1883 largely eliminated the right to due process and equal protection under the law for African Americans.
In a report published by the Equal Justice Institute (EJI), it says of the 1883 rulings by the Supreme Court:
“The Supreme Court’s decision in the Civil Rights Cases eliminated the only federal law that prohibited racial discrimination by individuals or private businesses and left African Americans who were victims of private discrimination to seek legal recourse in unsympathetic state courts. Racial discrimination in housing, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and employment became increasingly entrenched and persisted for generations. It would be more than 80 years before Congress tried again to outlaw discrimination by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” (https://calendar.eji.org/
Consequently, African Americans and other oppressed peoples cannot be assured under US law that their Civil Rights are guaranteed within the existing system. The MAGA movement has brought to the surface once again the institutional racism which has always characterized US society.
The only guarantee for the oppressed is the continuation of resistance, mobilization and organization designed to win genuine liberation and social emancipation. Although the Trump administration did not prevail in the Trump v. Barbara case, they are attempting to introduce and pass legislation which would achieve the same objectives.
When the key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act were struck down by the same Supreme Court it was a clear indication of the desire to reinforce the oppressed status of African Americans. The redrawing of Congressional maps to benefit the MAGA rulers must be overturned to provide some semblance of the right to self-determination and equal protection for the African American people.
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Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT–
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