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This is an excellent article and the 14th Amendment cannot be emphasized enough. As a fine historical point, however, Epps left out the big idea of the time. W.E.B. DuBois probably included this in his book, Gift of Black Folk, but if he didn't he should have. While immigrants were talked about incidentally to the 14th Amendment, the big idea was to give former slaves equality before the law. It was the Black people whose votes would pass the 14th Amendment in the South. It was the racists, North and South, who could not imagine a world of equal treatment before the law.
The battles fought by Black people, in the 1860s as well as later periods when the Supreme Court finally extended the full range of 14th Amendment rights to all people between 1926 and 1973, should be remembered by all Americans whatever their ethnic origin.
