Constituton Project, Inc.

The Mission: Constitution Project, Inc., a Florida non-profit, was founded by Joseph Cofield, for the purpose of putting a copy of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence in the hands of every 5th grade student in Florida. That is a huge task, as there are over 200,000 5th graders in 67 different Florida counties, but progress ​ is being made thanks to Joseph's extraordinary efforts!

The How: Joseph began his mission in April 2014 and since then, many amazing things have happened. To gather support for his mission, in April of 2015 he began his 27 - 67 Journey Across Florida - visiting each of the 67 Florida counties, riding his bike 21 miles and running 6 in each county (one mile for each of the 27 Amendments). That is over 1,800 difficult miles meeting with state and county officials, school personnel and service organizations.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

My Third Favorite Amendment...

November 8, 2015

Early last month when the candidates running for the highest office in our land was debating about what the Fourteenth Amendment means I had to jump off my seat and decide to share this Amendment with everyone I met for an entire week.

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) actually have a total of five Sections with of course the fifth section stating "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." This seems about the only part of the Amendment XIV the candidates could agree upon.

Unlike my other favorite Amendments, I will take the time to break each of the other four sections of this Amendments down for you because of the importance of each of the section in order to understand the Equal Protection of the Laws.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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; or deny to any within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As I mentioned in my last 27 - 67 Daily Lesson, the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) (please note that Sanford was incorrectly spelled in the original court document and thus is written this way for the importance of keeping this page as accurate as possible) the Supreme Court decision gave the States the rights to determine citizenship. You may recall that I also stated the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, free or slave, could never be citizens of the United States.

In Section 1 of Amendment XIV defines both national and state citizenship and for the first time this Amendment defined citizenship in the Constitution for the first time. This means that as of July 9, 1868 my ancestors and their fight now allowed me to be born a citizen of this great United States of America.

This is why the Amendment XIV is so near and dear to me because "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" automatically became citizens of the both the American nation and the state in which they resided. Even this wording was not perfect for all the people of this nation. The nation had to go back and correct another group left behind. The government got it totally right in 1924 when the amendment not only cover those person "subject to the jurisdiction" but to the Native Americans we know as the American Indians as well.

Thus to so many other teaching points in this section, I will continue my next posting with more information about Section 1 of Amendment XIV before going on to Section 2.

Joseph

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