The Thirteenth Amendment freedom extends to equal property and market rights
Evidence
Negro citizens, North and South, who saw in the Thirteenth Amendment a promise of freedom—freedom to “go and come at pleasure” and to “buy and sell when they please”—would be left with “a mere paper guarantee” if Congress were powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white man. At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 580
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Defines Thirteenth Amendment freedom concretely as economic equality — the semantic anchor for reparations as a property remedy.