You Are Not American Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers

Amanda Frost

eBook - 2021

Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History PrizeCitizenship is invaluable, yet our status as citizens is always at risk—even for those born on US soil.Over the last two centuries, the US government has revoked citizenship to cast out its unwanted, suppress dissent, and deny civil rights to all considered “un-American”—whether due to their race, ethnicity, marriage partner, or beliefs. Drawing on the narratives of those who have struggled to be treated as full members of “We the People,” law professor Amanda Frost exposes a hidden history of discrimination and xenophobia that continues to this day.The Supreme Court’s rejection of Black citizenship in Dred Scott was among the first and most notorious examples of citizenship strippi...ng, but the phenomenon did not end there. Women who married noncitizens, persecuted racial groups, labor leaders, and political activists were all denied their citizenship, and sometimes... more