A first generation of Black Americans was born into full citizenship rights.

Evidence

As a woman in my forties, I am part of the first generation of Black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which Black people had full rights of citizenship. Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just fifty. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, Black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 173

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the ‘less than 50 years of full citizenship’ metric that anchors the reframing argument’s timeline.