Book Reviewed by:
In All the Sinners Bleed, as Titus Crown, first Black sheriff of Charon County, Virginia, faces down a group of Confederate Army reenactors parading through his town, he "[feels] his skin begin to crawl" and considers that "the Fourteenth Amendment had passed over a hundred years ago" and "racism was alive and well." The juxtaposition of these thoughts is a reminder both of how recently the United States government decided that Black people deserve full citizens' rights, and how much more action is required for that decision to sink in.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is one of three Reconstruction Amendments passed in the aftermath of the Civil War (the others are the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery, and Fifteenth, protecting African American voting rights). It is best known for extending the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. It was passed on June 13, 1866 and ratified on July 9, 1868, after fierce opposition from the ...
