It’s rare to see a dramatic feature filmmaker step into the documentary world with the mastery, authority, and insightful force that Ava DuVernay summons. His 2016 documentary “13th” was a revelation; It told the harrowing story of how the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, was a revolutionary change of law that also opened the door to the perpetuation of many aspects of slavery under different names and tactics in America. The film was both despairing and inspiring; He has purified you with the truth.
Tonight, the New York Film Festival presented the premiere of DuVernay’s follow-up documentary, “The 14th,” in which she sets her sights on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868; it was so monumental that it guaranteed equal protection under the law, but also encompassed five complex chapters dealing with issues from insurrection to due process that one observer called it “a Constitution unto itself” and another hailed it. “The everything bagel of democracy.”
I’m pleased to report that “The 14th” exerts the same kind of historical/contemporary power as “The 13th.” DuVernay has a unique ability to bring to life the nuances of history while working in a highly accessible and mainstream way. “14.” It’s full of history, but it’s not a dry lecture. Instead, DuVernay dismantles the dusty indifference we feel toward the Constitution (just hearing that word can make you feel like you’re back in school) and shows us that the Constitution is a living, breathing document, one that we fail to heed at our own peril. That’s more or less what’s happening today.
A powerful movie about history that will almost surprise you. It’s supposed to show you that not even half of what you think you know. “The 14th” begins with a sharp insight that the three Constitutional amendments adopted after the Civil War (the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments) represented nothing less than a reboot of American life and society. But we don’t necessarily talk about them that way. Everyone knows who the “framers” of the Constitution were (Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin), but “14th” argues that the period immediately after the disaster of the Civil War had its own framers who were almost as important. Thaddeus Stevens, a member of the House of Representatives who was part of the Radical Republican faction of the 1860s, is a figure who, according to one observer of the film, “created the world we live in today.”
With the abolition of slavery, four million formerly enslaved people were suddenly added to the fabric of American society. How will this work? DuVernay tells the story of Reconstruction with fresh eyes, and part of the power of her story is that it doesn’t skimp on the joy and liberation that are part of it. Black Americans, now citizens, formed communities and industries, became newspaper editors and law enforcement officers as well as politicians (there were 1,000 newly elected Black representatives). But there’s more to it than that. It is emphasized that, for the first time in American life, black people were able to create a fully realized dream of who they wanted to be as individuals. But this won’t work unless their citizenship is changed. sacred. That’s the first thing the 14th Amendment did. It guaranteed equal protection under the law and established the birthright of citizenship for all persons born in the United States; a radical idea designed for both the children of formerly enslaved people and the children of immigrants, because it meant accelerating the rejection of the European aristocratic system (i.e., citizenship by inheritance) that was first overthrown by the American Revolution. Birthright citizenship was a continuation of what the original Constitution began.
In recent years, keeping talking heads off-screen, allowing their words to flow over the soundtrack without interrupting the footage, has become a stylistic tic in documentaries. DuVernay is having none of it. He assembled an extraordinary cast of scholars, politicians, and commentators, led by Civil Rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, who became the oratory star of the film. We see the speakers and absorb the play of their personalities as they explain, with big-picture but highly personalized passion, how the laws of the land actually work in the creation of the universe. second America rising from the ashes of the Civil War. DuVernay makes history organic by capturing how the fabric of people’s lives is changed by the law. And he’ll go wherever he needs to show it, even including comedy clips from George Carlin and the great Paul Mooney to throw in some of the happiness of white people during their slave-owning era that has to be seen to be believed. (His part isn’t actually about the slave era; it’s about today.)
As seen in the film, the rise of new Black citizens during Reconstruction was rapid. First of all, Black Americans did not waste their time and soul in the pursuit of revenge. But the decline was rapid as a culture of systematic violence and murder began to rise in the South, trying to put the genie of liberation back into the bottle. The Ku Klux Klan was half of that. The other half is captured in DuVernay’s stunning portrait of The Lost Cause; A culture of defiance, repentance, and literal justification that represented Southerners’ awareness of what life was before the Civil War. Slavery itself, its obscene horrors and inhumanity, were erased from collective memory, and the Civil War was recast as the “war of Northern aggression.”
What remained were totems and symbols that were somehow infused. dignity. The film traces the history of the Confederate flag as a signifier, showing us how rock stars from Tom Petty to ZZ Top used it as a badass backdrop and noting how the flag was printed on the roof of the General Lee, a 1969 orange Dodge Charger driven by the heroes of “The Dukes of Hazzard.” It was one of the most popular TV shows of its time (it debuted in 1979, as Jimmy Carter’s presidency was winding down), essentially using the semiotics of the Civil War — those who went to war to maintain slavery — as indicators of coolness.
This consciousness extended to the erection of Confederate monuments in public squares; this movement was so widespread (2,629 such monuments were built in the South) that it became greater than the sum of its parts. According to one viewer of the film, the message to Black citizens was: “You matter so little that we will celebrate the people who want to enslave you.” The film looks at what this movement to remove these monuments is really about and what it entails, specifically the statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia’s capital (the former capital of the Confederacy). This is all part of how the myth of the Lost Cause became what the film calls “the greatest lie in American history.”
So what does this have to do with the 14th Amendment? DuVernay comes close to that. The main subject of the movie is the power of law and the erosion of law. The dehumanization of Black people represented by the persistent representation of Confederate iconography in mainstream culture has become a covert indicator of the instability of the freedoms enshrined by the 14th Amendment. Taking its fiery imagery from “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), the rise of the Klan was not just a matter of domestic terrorism. This was an attempt to “overthrow biracial democracy.” There were 4,400 lynchings between the Civil War and World War II. The backlash against Reconstruction, institutionalized by Jim Crow (a “legal” system that was essentially a culture of fascist violence), was so ingrained that it was not until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that the power of the 14th Amendment began to reassert itself.
As documentaries catch up with current events, their impact diminishes, but “14.” As we move into the present day, something remarkable happens: The film’s themes of racial oppression begin to morph into themes of generalized oppression. The section of the 14th Amendment regarding “insurrection” could not be clearer. Anyone responsible for inciting an insurrection against the government of the United States cannot run for public office. This means Donald Trump should not be allowed to run for president in 2024 following the apparent insurrection on January 6th. In this sense, he trampled on the Constitution simply by being re-elected, and the trashing of the 14th Amendment continued unabated. Citizenship by birth? It was ignored. Litigation process? Out the window with ICE.
The media has persistently understated just how ugly a Constitutional crisis the United States has been in the midst of since the beginning of 2025. But Ava DuVernay expresses it with great courage. I disagree with the attempt to raise DEI as a Constitutional issue at the level of the Voting Rights Act. (The film itself acknowledges that the DEI movement, no matter one’s opinion, amounts to nothing more than a “cultural shift.”) But the big picture, where it shows us, is how the freedoms of the 14th Amendment are under siege, and that this may be nothing less than the ritual growing pains of American democracy—the built-in trauma. Progress, reaction, conflict turning violent… and then progress again. This is the rhythm, the moral and spiritual ups and downs of perfecting our imperfect union. “14.” It shows that we are now in the heat of the reaction. But it also makes you feel like progress is expected again on the flanks.