The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language of the Fourteenth Amendment, a dignity-based legal theory of affirmative equal rights had by 1867 taken center stage in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. Activists formulated the concept of “public rights” as a claim to participation without discrimination in the entire sphere of “common life.” Elections for delegates to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, held under the broad suffrage mandated by the Military Reconstruction Acts, yielded a convention in which half of the members were men of African descent. Seeking the “impartial treatment of all men” in “[c]hurches, hotels, cars, steamboats, theaters, stores, even schools,” the convention crafted a Bill of Rights that affirmatively guaranteed to all of the state's citizens “the same civil, political, and public rights,” independent of race or color. These innovations in the defense of human rights under law drew from a deep well of anti-caste thinking developed in domestic and transnational discussions conducted in both French and English, with participants from both sides of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cosmopolitan progressives such as Edouard Tinchant and Jean-Charles Houzeau worked with Louisiana-born activists including Louis Charles Roudanez, Simeon Belden, and Paul Trévigne to develop and advance the idea of public rights. Legislators crafted and passed state statutes that provided for civil penalties for violation of these rights, along with a private cause of action that could yield both actual and exemplary damages. Throughout the 1870s, however, advocates met a fierce white-supremacist counterattack, one that fused obstructionist litigation, vote suppression, and vigilante violence. A claim to equal treatment under the 1868 constitution was won in the state courts by Josephine Decuir, but was overturned in 1877 at the United States Supreme Court. With the ascent of the Democratic Party, white supremacists–including the lawyer/vigilante Robert Hardin Marr-took their seats on the state Supreme Court. By 1879, the public rights guarantees had been expunged from the state's constitution. Nonetheless, for a crucial decade, the cross-racial politics of Louisiana had overcome many of the deficits of legitimacy that often undercut moments of transitional lawmaking. Delegates to the 1867–68 Constitutional Convention took the opportunity to spell out specific positive rights that they saw as essential to full civil freedom. And at the center, they placed their insistence that the state had an obligation to assure that men and women of color would not be subjected to forced indignity in the public sphere.

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辨高罪：重建中平等“公权”的概念

美国宪法第十四修正案的语言所受的现代解释之山往往掩盖了在其起草时实际流传的多种反歧视概念。此外，正如种族和法律的作者所指出的那样，在 1866-68 年的过渡司法时期，国会本身缺乏任何非裔美国人的代表。随后发展的限制联邦民权执法范围的“国家行动原则”反过来又掩盖了当代对重建时代倡议试图打击的危害的重要理解。与第十四修正案的含蓄语言相反，基于尊严的平等权利法律理论在 1867 年成为国际大都市新奥尔良的中心舞台。活动家将“公共权利”的概念表述为在整个“共同生活”领域中不受歧视地参与的主张。路易斯安那州 1867-68 年制宪会议的代表选举是在《军事重建法案》授权的广泛选举下举行的，产生了一项会议，其中一半成员是非洲裔男性。为了在“教堂、旅馆、汽车、汽船、剧院、商店，甚至学校”中寻求“对所有人的公正待遇”，大会制定了一项权利法案，肯定地保证该州所有公民“享有相同的公民权利” 、政治和公共权利”，与种族或肤色无关。这些在依法捍卫人权方面的创新源于在以法语和英语进行的国内和跨国讨论中形成的反种姓思想的深渊，参与者来自大西洋和加勒比海两岸。Edouard Tinchant 和 Jean-Charles Houzeau 等国际主义进步人士与 Louis Charles Roudanez、Simeon Belden 和 Paul Trévigne 等出生于路易斯安那州的活动家合作，共同发展和推进公共权利理念。立法者制定并通过了州法规，规定对侵犯这些权利的行为进行民事处罚，以及可能产生实际和惩戒性损害赔偿的私人诉讼理由。然而，在整个 1870 年代，拥护者遇到了激烈的白人至上主义反击，这种反击融合了阻挠诉讼、压制选票、和私刑暴力。约瑟芬·德库尔（Josephine Decuir）在州法院赢得了根据 1868 年宪法享有平等待遇的主张，但于 1877 年在美国最高法院被推翻。随着民主党的崛起，白人至上主义者——包括律师/义务警员罗伯特·哈丁·马尔——在州最高法院获得了席位。到 1879 年，公共权利保障已从国家宪法中删除。尽管如此，在关键的十年里，路易斯安那州的跨种族政治克服了许多经常削弱过渡立法时刻的合法性缺陷。1867-68 年制宪会议的代表借此机会阐明了他们认为对充分公民自由至关重要的具体积极权利。而在中心，