The founding documents never defined who qualified as a citizen

Evidence

Black Americans had been exploring citizenship and how to secure it since the eighteenth century. They knew that the Declaration of Independence provided that “all men are created equal” and at one point speaks of “fellow citizens,” but did not explain who was and was not a citizen. The Articles of Confederation, drafted in 1777 to govern the new loose assembly of former colonies, told them nothing about who was a citizen and instead promised that “the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from Justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states.” It was not even clear who had the authority to rectify the oversight. The principle of federalism divided governance in the new nation between the states and the federal government, but neither had express authority over citizenship. Ambiguity and confusion followed. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 692

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the founding-era legal vacuum: neither Declaration, Articles, nor federalism designated authority over citizenship.
• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s ‘origin stories as infrastructure’ thesis — the framers left citizenship undefined, and that gap became the opening for 19th-century Black activists to fill.