Purpose Of The 14th Amendment

The tenth and fourteenth amendment are both very controversial amendments that are critical to our lives. The original purpose of the tenth amendment is that any power not given to the federal government is given to the states and the people. The fourteenth amendment’s original purpose was to grant citizenship to former slaves. Now it is used to grant citizenship and equal protection regardless of your race; “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.[...] nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.” Today, these two amendments were crucial in the past and will continue to be. There have been recent cases where the tenth and fourteenth amendment were applied to. The Colorado Marijuana Law is a prime example of the tenth amendment. The people of the state decided whether or not they supported the legalization of marijuana. It was put on a ballot where they voted. This decision
Women who came to the United States to give birth to their baby, do this because they want their children to have better opportunities as an American citizen. That baby is an American citizen and the fourteenth amendment is applied and used because it says “born or naturalized” and that baby was born in America. The fourteenth amendment is needed in the Jim Crow South because the way African Americans were treated in the past was horrible. The citizenship test was made for them to fail especially since most of them did not know how to read or write. They were denied the rights, privileges listed in the Constitution, faced discrimination, and were not treated equally. Emmett Till was lynched for whistling at a white woman but if it was a white man doing this to a black woman, the white man will not be