Conference: Reflections on the Impact of the Reconstruction Amendments: A Research Symposium on the Social and Economic Outcomes of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

This is a research symposium and conference on the social and economic outcomes of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It will be held at the National Archives building. These Amendments to the US Constitution were passed in the period 1865 - 1870. The title of this project reflects the general theme of the event and the projected activities for the conference. It has two major goals. The focused goal of this event is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of undergraduates, graduate students, and senior scholars in STEM disciplines to explore, in a research context, the long evolution of economic and race inequality in the US, despite these three Amendments, over the course of the century and a half after their passage into law. A second longer term goal is to continue to develop laddered research settings in higher education that combine the efforts of undergraduate students, graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty in a conscious effort to provide new research findings and expose undergraduates to rich research in the social sciences. The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, including African Americans. The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The value in a focused study these Amendments is that their full enactment did not become fully operational in the legal sense until the mid-1960s. The early promise of these amendments was reduced by state laws and federal court decisions over the course of the 19th century. Their promise was legally re-affirmed in the 1950s and 1960s, but the real social and economic implications took another half century to fully define.