The Man America Tried to Erase - March 28, 1898

On March 28, 1898, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Wong Kim Ark, a San Francisco-born son of Chinese immigrants, detained in his own harbor, was an American citizen by birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case settled the issue of birthright citizenship for a generation. It also revealed that the man most celebrated for civil rights courage, Justice John Marshall Harlan, voted against Wong on deeply prejudiced grounds. And 127 years later, the exact same constitutional argument is playing out in federal courts today.