African-Americans living free in Baltimore before the Civil War were constantly testing whether the law and courts saw them as citizens, with rights to be respected. In a prize-winning book, Johns Hopkins Professor Martha S. Jones argues the free Blacks of Baltimore shaped the idea of birthright citizenship that made it into the U.S. constitution … and that their struggle still carries meaning for today’s immigrants.
“People had been permitted to labor in this country, to build families, communities, vocations. And yet they lived with a profound uncertainty about whether they would be permitted to stay, whether they had rights under the law.”
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