But what does that have to do with the 14th Amendment? DuVernay is getting to that. The true subject of the movie is the power of law, and the erosion of law. The dehumanization of Black people represented by the persistence of Confederate iconography in mainstream culture became an underground signifier of the precariousness of the freedoms enshrined by the 14th Amendment. The rise of the Klan, who took their cross-burning imagery from “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), wasn’t simply a matter of domestic terrorism. It was an attempt “to overthrow biracial democracy.” Between the Civil War and World War II, there were 4,400 lynchings. So entrenched was the backlash against Reconstruction, which was institutionalized with Jim Crow (a system of “law” that was really a culture of fascist violence), that it wasn’t until Brown vs. Board of Education, in 1954, that the might of the 14th Amendment began to reassert itself.
Documentaries tend to lessen in impact when they catch up to recent events, but as “14th” moves into the current era something remarkable happens: The film’s themes of racial oppression begin to mutate into themes of generalized oppression. The section of the 14th Amendment that deals with “insurrection” could not be more explicit. It states that anyone who has been responsible for fomenting an insurrection against the United States government cannot run for public office. This means that Donald Trump, after the unambiguous insurrection of Jan. 6, should not have been allowed to run for president in 2024. In that sense, he trampled on the Constitution simply by being re-elected, and the trashing of the 14th Amendment continued unabated. Birthright citizenship? Ignored. Due process? Out the window with ICE.
