The assault on birthright citizenship is an attempt to steal one of Reconstruction’s greatest democratic achievements. As constitutional scholar Sherrilyn Ifill reminds us, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment undertook a “race-conscious project” designed to dismantle racial caste and establish birthright citizenship as the legal foundation of a multiracial democracy. As Martha S. Jones demonstrates in Birthright Citizens, birthright citizenship was not bestowed from above. It was forged through generations of Black struggle against slavery, racial caste, and white supremacy. More
