Today, Americans of various cultural, political and sexual persuasions will be celebrating Memorial Day — May 26, 2025 — as a day of remembrance.
Our memories are fallible, of course… especially for folks in my generation. The Baby Boomers.
A lot of us are having trouble remembering names, for example.
Maybe we run across a familiar face at the Hilltop Cemetery? Someone laying a wreath at a nearby grave… someone we used to know by name?
And we glance at the headstone they’re decorating, to try and jog our memory…
But it’s not just names. Other aspects of our memories can also be faulty.
Most of my generation studied American history back in high school, and spent some time studying the U.S. Constitution. We probably took a quiz, at some point, on the meaning of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
The language of those amendments is not complicated.
Slavery was outlawed in America by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, in 1865.
Section 1. 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.
Freeing former slaves in 1865 — about 4 million individuals — was only the tip of the political iceberg, however. The freed slaves owned nothing of their own — no homes, no land, no wealth — and most of them continued working for the same plantation owners where they’d been enslaved, but now as underpaid labor. The economic, social and educational opportunities available to the former slaves were, for most, non-existent.
Nor did they have a right to vote. Although most had been born on American soil, they did not yet possess the rights of citizenship.
The 14th and 15th Amendments were an attempt to change their legal status from disenfranchised non-citizens to fully protected citizens with the right to vote and the right to legal due process.
From the 14th Amendment:
Section 1. 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.
An interesting idea… to declare that the former slaves could no longer be deprived of property… because most had none.
From the 15th Amendment:
Section 1. 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.
Together, these three amendments attempted to utterly change the legal status of the former slaves, most of whom were of African descent, brought to America against their will.
160 years later, many American Blacks still struggle to obtain the civil rights and economic privileges enjoyed by most White citizens.
If we so chose, Memorial Day could also be envisioned as a day of remembrance for another group of fighters who died in the quest for freedom and equality, right here on American soil. These fighters didn’t wear military uniforms, nor were they authorized by the U.S. government to engage in battle.
These fighters almost never carried weapons. More likely, they carried a bible.
Sadly enough, many members of the U.S. military, who died in the line of duty, fought in vain… in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Kuwait, in the Dominican Republic, in Lebanon… none of these conflicts resulted in a clear ‘victory’ for the U.S.
In a similar fashion, the battle for equality and civil rights continues to this day, with no clear victory in sight.
Currently, various people in powerful government positions have committed themselves to limiting the civil rights of certain people living in America.
Some of the people now threatened by the government are here on official business, and have documentation granting them the rights to live and study and work here. Others are here without any authorization. Still others were born here, and had assumed that the 14th Amendment provided the rights of citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States.”
In Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court interpreted the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment as granting birthright citizenship to all born within the jurisdiction of the United States and allowing Congress to establish alternative pathways for naturalization.
In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court confirmed that children born in the United States receive birthright citizenship, regardless of whether their parents are non-citizen immigrants.
Are these Supreme Court decisions worth remembering, on Memorial Day?
Or do we prefer to forget our history?