Documenting Brown 1: The Fourteenth Amendment
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PBS Learning Media
Documenting Brown 1: The Fourteenth Amendment
In the years immediately following the Civil War, Reconstruction-era legislation granted African Americans full citizenship and voting rights. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted equal protection under the law. Soon after it was ratified, and for decades to follow, this equal protection clause would be used to argue that segregation was unconstitutional.