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working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org.

This is America in Pursuit, a limited runrun series from ThruLine and NPR.

I'm Ramtin Arab-Louis.

Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S.

that began 250 years ago.

Since we started this series, there's one thing that's remained consistent in each episode.

The rights to those pursuits were not granted or guaranteed for everyone.

And while the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War marked a major turning point for granting some rights to black Americans,

there were still a lot of

unanswered questions about what would come next.

What is going to happen to nearly 4 million African Americans who had been enslaved in the South?

Are they going to have basic rights? Are they not going to have basic rights?

The 14th Amendment sought to put those questions to rest and clarify once and for all,

who was considered an American and what kind of rights Americans should have.

Well, the 14th Amendment is a charter of basic rights.

And in trying to give basic rights to African Americans,

the 14th Amendment gave basic rights to everybody.

But in the aftermath of the Civil War,

not everyone was on board with this revision

of who had access to what rights.

Today on this show,

...