Fourteenth Amendment Of Us Constitution In Kings
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14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)
“If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.”
King returned often to a central tenet of his work: holding America and its people to the promise of “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all men, a promise made by the Founders against the backdrop of the practice of slavery and the displacement of Native peoples.
Just before telling his audience his Memphis that he had “been to the mountaintop . . . and seen the promised land,” King made reference, for the last time, to the aspirational language of the Declaration and the Constitution, referring to them as “those great wells of democracy” which the Founding Fathers “dug deep.” ...
Why was the Fourteenth Amendment controversial in women's rights circles? This is because, for the first time, the proposed Amendment added the word "male" into the US Constitution.
At the Philadelphia Convention, he opposed increasing the power of the federal government. Martin believed in the rights of the states and of the people and wanted each state to have an equal vote in Congress. He also wanted a bill of rights.
He explained this to the graduates of Lincoln University in 1961 when he quoted our Declaration of Independence, `"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of ...
The original Constitution didn't define citizenship, nor did it give any guarantees of equality. But the 14th Amendment enabled any group of Americans to turn to the Federal government if they faced discrimination and gave them the legal tools to demand redress, just as King did on that December night in Alabama.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
