Anyone born in the United States is a US citizen and entitled to equal protection under the law—that is one of the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Ratified in 1868, shortly after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the Amendment granted US citizenship to formerly enslaved people. But it by no means brought an end to racism or inequality.
Ten years after her acclaimed 2016 documentary 13th, Ava DuVernay connects the history of the United States to the present through the lens of the Fourteenth Amendment. With rapid-fire editing, DuVernay traces the historical continuity from Jim Crow to Donald Trump. It is no coincidence that one of the first things President Trump promised to do on taking office was to end birthright citizenship. The film brings together the racial tensions of present-day America, from George Floyd, whose killing by police made him a symbol of the Black Lives Matter protest movement, to the storming of the Capitol and ICE’s pursuit of immigrants.
