Slavery, Free Blacks and Citizenship

Reconstruction Amendments says about the nature of American citizenship. The essay is organized as follows. Part I of the essay explores citizenship and membership by discussing belonging-based citizenship and rights-based citizenship. Part II describes how American and African American citizenship were constructed prior to the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments. Part III notes a few cases to explain how the Reconstruction Amendment\u27s jurisprudence has developed in the wake of Dred Scott v. Sandford\u27 and possibly led to a tilt toward a rights-based citizenship rather than a somewhat more robust belonging-based citizenship