The Fourteenth Amendment addresses many aspects of citizenship and the rights of citizens. The Due Process Clause provides that no states shall deprive any "person" of "life, liberty or property" without due process of law.The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Sandford (1857), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be U.S. citizens. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its amendments as well as the twenty-sixth amendment to the Constitution represent more recent expansions. The themes reflect changes in how people of African descent in the United States have viewed themselves, the influence of social movements on racial ideologies. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment in July 1868. Furthermore, in the absence of positive African-American history Black students may form the belief that. Black, A New Birth of Freedom 74-75 (1997). Providence, Press of the Daily journal, 1867. Headings.