In my last article, The Constitutional Compromise to Guarantee Education, I examined the period immediately leading up to and following the Fourteenth Amendment and found that the ratification of the 14th Amendment and southern state's education clauses in the constitutions were inextricably intertwined. Quite simply, rewriting their constitutions and providing for public education was a condition of readmission to the Union, as was the ratification of the 14th Amendment. In other words, without constitutional guarantees of education, southern states never reenter the Union. And without southern votes for the 14th Amendment, the amendment never becomes part of the constitution. Thus, I argue that one cannot understand the rights of state citizenship that the 14th Amendment secured, nor the meaning of a republican form of government, without examining those state constitutions.
