The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is one of the post-Civil War amendments, and includes, among others, the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. It was proposed on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 9, 1868.
The amendment provides a broad definition of national citizenship, which overrides the decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford of 1857, which had excluded slaves and their descendants from possessing constitutional rights. It requires states to provide equal protection before the law to all persons (not just citizens) within their jurisdictions. The importance of the Fourteenth Amendment was exemplified when it was interpreted to prohibit racial segregation in public schools in the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
There were of course several people who held this view, but perhaps the most prominent was Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States, who pushed for a much more secure Europe after WWI to prevent such things from happening again.
