Every American citizen owes a debt of gratitude to John Mercer Langston, architect of the 14th Amendment and founding dean of the Howard University School of Law.
His writings and speeches are critical to understanding the current implementation of the most important provision of the U.S. Constitution.
Just a month after the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865, Langston spoke about the interpretations by several attorneys general that African-Americans could not be citizens. As the first Black person to address the Missouri legislature on Jan. 9, 1866, Langston said, “Indeed, it has not been uncommon for distinguished officials, occupying high positions in the State and National Governments, to make the assertion that ours is and shall remain a white man’s Government.”
However, he continued, that is not what the Founders decided. “It was South Carolina that made the proposition, when the Articles of Confederation were under consideration in Congress, to insert the word ‘white’ between the words ‘free’ and ‘inhabitants,’ in the fourth article of that document, and make it read that ‘the free white inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.’
Eleven States were called upon to vote on this proposition. Each State had one vote. Eight States voted against it, two States for it, and one State was divided in her vote. Thus, as early as 1778, with an unusual unanimity, our Fathers branded this word and set their seal of disapprobation upon the unjust discrimination which it imports.”
In fact, Langston notes that the franchise was available. “When the Constitution was ratified, free colored men voted in a majority of all the States. They voted in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina.”
Between 1812 and the Dred Scott decision, Langston decries a “National apostacy in this matter.” He cited an 1843 ruling by Attorney General H.S. Legere that a Black applicant for land could not be considered a citizen.
Langston was leader of the Equal Rights League from 1864-1868, the political movement that shepherded the 14th Amendment. The 4 million Africans in the U.S. had the same issue that sparked the American Revolution — taxation without representation.
“It has always been our fortune to be held to a full discharge of all the obligations and duties which citizenship imposes, while it has ever been our misfortune to be denied well-nigh all the privileges, advantages, and rights, it naturally confers,” said Langston. “We have been taxed and denied representation. We have paid to the government the full debt of our allegiance; and then we have been denied the protection due its defenders.”
The novel and contrived interpretation that the 14th Amendment bans use of race leaves out its role as repealing the Dred Scott decision. The same Congress that approved the 14th Amendment by two-thirds of both houses would charter the Freedmen’s Bank and Howard University.
Sixteen civil rights acts since 1866 have underscored the covenant with African American citizens to realize the protections of the Constitution. Myriad congressional findings have confirmed that has not happened yet.
There is no equivalency between those institutions and the violent gangs proscribed in the three Force Acts during the 1870s. In fact, the Justice Department was founded in 1870 specifically to protect African-Americans from violent former Confederates.
On July 30, 1866, 200 Union Army veterans gathered in the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans to ponder a new state constitution. Former Confederates surrounded them and massacred them, an outrage which propelled the passage of the 14th Amendment.
Now the site of the Hotel Roosevelt, this spot is sacred for American democracy.
The military takeover of cities led by Black woman politicians such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. evokes the same echoes of New Orleans and the Wilmington, N.C. race riot of 1898 that unseated an elected Black city government. The currently contemplated Texas mid-decade redistricting scheme comes right out of the Black Codes playbook that sparked the Joint Reconstruction Committee.
All Americans need to heed the sage wisdom of Langston, who has provided a stable framework for democracy across the globe.
John William Templeton is author of “Citizenship for All: 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment” and founder of the 22d annual Journal of Black Innovation National Black Business Month at blackbusinessmonth.com.
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