Presidential overreach and congressional abdication of authority? David Alvis and Joe Postell cover it all in their latest CDC volume, Separation of Powers.

The 15th Amendment was the third and final constitutional change of Reconstruction, hailed then and since as a profound leap in American democracy. And though the story of its deliberation, enactment, and enforcement illustrates its great potential impact, many of those possibilities were only realized in the mid-20th century by the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement.