Did the Fourteenth Amendment represent a “Second Founding” for America?

0:05I think that the 14th Amendment was truly a second founding. When you think about the first founding, the original founding, the founding we think about when we talk about the founding fathers. They really guaranteed liberty and they guaranteed self government. They created democratic processes, and they guaranteed certain liberties that the government, through the Democratic processes, could never infringe, could never take away, like the freedom of speech, or the right to bear arms, are two examples. But what they left out was equality. It's true that equality was assumed to a large degree. But on the ground, it was never really practiced. There was this original sin of slavery. Not only was there the original sin of slavery, but there was this question of whether

0:55free Black persons were citizens of the United States, entitled to the privileges and immunities of other citizens of the United States. In other words, there was this question of Black equality. The 14th Amendment is the amendment after the Civil War that really guarantees that equality. It guarantees that all citizens of the United States, of all races and colors, of all national origins, shall be treated equally, shall have the same privileges and immunities as white citizens. It was truly a second founding that completed this first founding, that perfected the first founding. We still have a long way to go, but now we have this equality guarantee in the Constitution in the form of the 14th Amendment.