In a 1995 EVC documentary on Reconstruction, high school students from the Coalition School for Social Change interviewed the renowned scholar of black history and radical public intellectual Dr. Manning Marable, author of books including How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983), Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1982 (1984), W.E.B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat (2005) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011).
Marable spoke with students about the importance of the 14th Amendment to our democracy, the struggle for equitable education for black Americans, and the case for reparations. Marable also expressed the need for a third Reconstruction, a term Rev. Dr. William Barber and others have applied to our contemporary black freedom struggles. The first segment of this historic interview resonates today, as Marable reminds us that the 14th Amendment states that no one—not even the president—is above the law.
