The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

by Nikole Hannah-Jones

The new Fourteenth Amendment put birthright on secure footing—insulating it from the changing winds of politics and the shifting minds of subsequent sessions of Congress. In June 1866, the proposed amendment was sent on to the states for ratification. Most of the former Confederate states refused to ratify. Congress then passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which mandated the establishment of new governments in the South, with Black men now eligible to vote and hold office, and required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of readmission into the Union. In just over two years, in July 1868, the requisite twenty-eight states had approved the amendment, and it was ratified. Notably, however, three of the four slaveholding border states that had remained in the Union—Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky—did not ratify the amendment until years later, in 1901, 1959, and 1976, respectively. Ambivalence about Black citizenship persisted.46