Black History Month 2025 is coming to an end.

When February comes around, news outlets, educators and others who mark Black History Month tend to focus on personalities. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Barack Obama and others. 

And that’s great – usually, there’s a story of a Black American hero that’s forgotten or little told. How Katherine Johnson and other Black women “computers” made this country’s space program possible was a revelation to millions when the film “Hidden Figures” was released in 2016.

But to commemorate Black History Month – and to continue to, as so many MAGAs like to say, “read the Constitution” – let’s skip around and focus on Amendments 13, 14 and 15.

These are often referred to as the Reconstruction Amendments, ratified between 1865 and 1870, aimed at correcting the American sin of slavery that resulted in the Civil War.

I doubt there are MAGA types – despite their self-proclaimed literacy about the Constitution – who have seriously read 13, 14 and 15. If they have, they do an amazing job of ignoring them in word and/or spirit.

13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Slavery isn’t peculiar to the United States and wasn’t newly thought up in the 16th century, as anyone who’s casually read a Bible knows.

But it seems few countries embraced slavery with the gusto that this one did – particularly, but far from exclusively, in the South.

It took the northern part of the United States, which didn’t rely on slavery as much for economic development, until well into the start of the 1800s to begin agitating against it. For the South, the equation was simpler – slave labor reduced costs. And if it was restricted to people who weren’t white, all the better.

So we fought a Civil War, almost as if it was penance for the horror we as a nation imposed. And, with the passage of the 13th Amendment – a process beautifully depicted by Steven Spielberg in his 2012 film, “Lincoln” – slavery ended in the United States.

Uh, no.

The second clause of the amendment specifically states “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

That’s the sound of the man working on the chain gang. (Sorry, Sam Cooke)

The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal for people who weren’t convicted of a crime. But it made it legal for people who were, forcing them into prison chain gangs and other such horrors.

And so, the back door to slavery, particularly for thousands of Black Americans, were laws passed in the Jim Crow that severely restricted their actions – so much so that the number of “crimes committed” skyrocketed. 

It’s one of the reasons why this nation has one of the largest rates of incarceration in the world. Particularly of Black man, who become a source of cheap labor for states and businesses who contract with them.

That’s the point of filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s outstanding documentary, “The 13th.” And it’s why when you look up the idea of repealing the amendment – something you would expect from those who think making America great again means reintroducing slavery – you’ll find Black and white liberal members of Congress advocating for repeal of just that clause.

14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The 14th Amendment does a lot of work. That’s why many scholars consider it the most consequential of the 28, or at least of the 18 passed after the Bill of Rights.

I’ll try to be brief.

The first section was thought to be required as a way to get around the Dred Scott ruling of 1857. That’s when the Supreme Court ruled that a runaway slave had no rights because he wasn’t a citizen. The backers didn’t want Congress changing its mind about this, so they enshrined “birthright citizenship” into the Constitution.

That’s the part Trump wants to get rid of by fiat, seeing it as a way to deny the rights of children born here to undocumented immigrants – what he and his ilk call “anchor babies.” 

But does that mean that if you are someone born to parents who were in the process of becoming but not yet citizens, your automatic citizenship would be revoked? That’s a legal nightmare in the making.

Yes, his Supreme Court is pretty tame. But if it upholds Trump’s view of this, you might as well rip this whole document up. 

That third section also seems pertinent in 2025. Because he got re-elected in 2024, the effort to hold Trump accountable for what he did on January 6 has died. In the criminal courts, anyway.

I just wonder what would happen if he could be found to have committed insurrection in a civil court and thus made constitutionally ineligible. Lawyer friends, help me out with this.

Also, in case these pardoned felons from January 6 have ideas about getting reimbursed for their trouble, I would suggest reading (READ THE CONSTITUTION!) section four to dissuade you of that notion.

One other point about the 14th Amendment: If you read it and wondered what’s going on if voting is restricted to men 21 and older, you obviously didn’t read the last two parts of this series. First, welcome, belatedly. Second, go back and read ’em – the 19th and 26th Amendments address this.

15th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

That’s all there is to the last of the Reconstruction amendments. It seems pretty simply stated – American citizens can’t be denied the right to vote because of what they look like.

Understood?

Apparently not. Because the 15th has been so violated since its ratification in 1870 that we needed the 24th Amendment that bars the use of poll taxes and the 1965 Voting Rights Act just to enforce it.

Racists – first Democrats immediately after the Civil War and then Republicans after passage of the Civil Rights Act – have found ways around the 15th.

The poll taxes that the 24th abolished were instituted in Southern states to make it too difficult for poor people – many of whom were Black – to vote. But those Black people who found the money to meet the tax faced so-called “literacy tests” designed to make it impossible for them to pass.

And even with everything that has been done, Republicans have found new ways to stop people of color from voting.

They’ll say that the voter ID laws they seem hellbent on passing are designed to protect against election fraud.

BS. The only fraud being committed is the effort to eliminate people of color and women from voter rolls. Enough of them were taken off by 2024 to possibly have made a difference in who was elected three months ago.

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The three Reconstruction amendments are not in the Constitution through the benevolence of the white ruling class of this country.

They are in there because of what rebellious slaves, freed men and women, advocates like Frederick Douglass, and the thousands of Black soldiers who literally fought against sedition and treason.

Amendments 13, 14 and 15 are more promise than realization. Making them work is the job of everyone who cherishes freedom – in Black History Month and the other 11 as well.