Amend your plans and watch this instead

We watched a limited series on Netflix today, and I can't recommend it to you enough: "Amend: The Fight for America." I got home and Brian was mid-way through the first episode, and then we proceeded to sit and watch the last five directly following. It's a documentary series on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and the fights that led up to it, the fights to expand it, the fights to protect it, and the fights to embody it.

    I admit to being uneducated about the depth and breadth of the Amendment, and this series was a total eye-opener for me. I don't expect that everyone else is as ignorant of the nuances and blaring obviousness of the Amendment as I discovered that I was, so I will only say that the stories around and beyond it are heartbreaking, inspiring, maddening, frustrating, beautiful and motivating. How the 14th Amendment isn't as celebrated as the original Bill of Rights is a travesty, especially since so many of us have it to thank for all/most of our rights and privileges as United States citizens.

    No exaggeration, this series should be shown in every history class in the country. I wish I'd seen it 30 years ago, because I'm honestly horrified at my ignorance of most of the circumstances around it.