PolicyLink Summit: Sherrilyn Ifill on the 14th Amendment and a lineage of founders

At the 2026 PolicyLink Summit, We Are The Founders: Writing the Unfinished Story of Our Democracy, Sherrilyn Ifill, Founding Director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at the Howard University School of Law, challenged us to expand our understanding of who counts as a founder — and reminded us that this country has already been refounded before. Watch her remarks on the people who fought to redefine freedom, citizenship, and equality, and what their legacy asks of us today. Chapters: 0:00 America's Second Founding: The Founders You Weren't Taught About 6:31 Anna Murray Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and the Women Who Founded a Nation 10:02 Colored Conventions, Black Sailors, and Self-Emancipation 18:30 Lincoln's Assassination and a Nation to Rebuild 22:50 Permission to Refound Your Country 25:09 The Schurz Report: What He Found in the South 31:15 The 14th Amendment: Citizenship, Due Process, and Equal Protection 38:10 Sections 2 Through 5: The 14th Amendment's Overlooked Tools 45:36 How Reconstruction Was Destroyed 49:36 Breaking the Back of Jim Crow