The 14th Amendment Was Meant to Be a Protection Against State Violence

On December 3, 1865, a group of Black Mississippians wrote to the state’s governor, demanding respect for their newly won freedom. “Now we are free,” they insisted, “we do not want to be hunted … All we ask is justice and to be treated like humane beings.” They recalled vividly “the yelping of bloodhounds and tareing of our fellow servants To pisces” by slave patrols, and called for an end to these violent abuses. The Fourteenth Amendment, written the next year and ratified in 1868, vindicated their demands for equal justice, human dignity, and bodily security.

The Fourteenth Amendment effected a fundamental transformation in the constitutional law of policing in two respects. First, it required states to respect basic fundamental rights, including those to life and personal security. State police could not indiscriminately search and seize Black Americans. Second, as Senator Jacob Howard—one of the” for all persons, regardless of race. The requirement of equal protection ended “,” according to Howard.