
In 1857, the Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott, his wife Harriet, and millions of other Black Americans couldn’t sue in federal court -- because we couldn’t be citizens. In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship. What transpired in between?
Long before emancipation, Black activists argued that people born on U.S. soil had the right to remain there. The 14th Amendment enshrined this in 1868. Native peoples were “given” full citizenship later. But before then, a different objective was on the table.
“Go back to Africa” wasn’t just anti-Black rhetoric but a proposal. The American Colonization Society aimed to deport free Black people, useless without forced labor, to West Africa. Right before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln approved what would become a botched mission to ship formerly enslaved people to Haiti.
Now, after violent U.S. intervention and theft in nations like Haiti, Black immigrants are being scapegoated and criminalized. I.C.E. has targeted citizens before, too. Local white vigilantes have expelled their Black neighbors from their hometowns.
In his inaugural speech, Trump called on audiences to envision his future: undone progress, accelerated violence, and insurrection. “In America,” he said, “impossible is what we do best.” But Black citizenship, birthed from white supremacist violence, legalized by an illegitimate system, and granted on stolen land, has never been secure. The future we deserve is liberation.