Racial Barriers to Citizenship: Internal Migration and Voting Rights, 1787-1965

• In Event: Internal Migration Politics and Policy

Abstract

In Dred Scott (1857), the U.S. Supreme Court went well beyond denying freedom to the Scott family, ruling that “no black person could ever be a citizen of the United States.” This sweeping decision to deny blacks from being national citizens grew out of antebellum concerns over black migration, led in part by Southern and Northern states enacting bans on black in-migration. Bridging literatures on semi-citizenship, internal migration and federalism, this article advances a right-based interpretation of free movement in the United States. By invalidating the Scott decision, the 14th Amendment did more than grant citizenship to all persons born in the country (known as jus soli). It provided a new legal foundation for the right to free movement to develop nationally. The article critically evaluates the historical development of free movement as a state level right before the Scott decision and as a national level right after the 14th Amendment. Placing the timing of federalism and rights-based developments on free movement alongside the well-known struggle over state and federal voting rights, the article reveals how free movement and voting rights have differently defined the rights-based barriers to national citizenship for blacks.

Author

• Allan Colbern, Arizona State University