Read the article by Eric Foner entitled “The Checkered History of the Great Fourteenth Amendment” in Oates

and Errico, eds., Portrait of America (pp. 396-404) Then go on the PAWS website and make your discussion post. We will discuss the article in class. Each posting must be at least ten complete sentences, but responses, if you choose to make them, can be shorter. You must complete your posting twenty-four hours prior to the class when the reading will be discussed. That date is listed on the course schedule.

With the discussions, I want to let the class pursue a topic that is of interest.  To do this, with each discussion topic I will propose questions and everyone can choose to address one of those listed.  In addition, you can make posts addressing other topics that were part of the reading.  These proposed topics are just a starting point for the discussions.

Note that that when I ask about whether someone proved their thesis, I am not questioning the merits or accuracy of the thesis, but whether you feel the evidence they presented in the reading sufficiently supports their thesis.  It is important to evaluate the accuracy of theses, but that is a different line of questioning.  In that type of questioning, a historian offers evidence to support their thesis, but someone else can question that thesis by stating other interpretations of that information or other information or interpretations that might question that thesis and support another one.

Suggested Discussion Topics

What importance, for shaping United States history, does Foner put on the passage and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment?

How did it change people’s view of the Constitution?

How did it change people’s ideas about the role of the federal government?

How did Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) challenge the basic ideas of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Do you think Foner proved his thesis?