Donald Trump launched his political career by spreading the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He launched his second term as president trying to overturn the plain and long-held intent of the 14th Amendment. In both cases, birth certificates played a crucial role.

Historian Susan J. Pearson returns to unpack the Supreme Court's recent birthright citizenship decision, the proposed SAVE Act, and why birth certificates have become one of the most politically contested documents in the United States.

Drawing on the history behind The Birth Certificate: An American History, she explains how government records shape citizenship, why the United States has no national proof of citizenship, and what happens when access to democracy depends on paperwork.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org. 

Susan J. Pearson (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2004) is an historian of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. She is particularly interested in the cultural politics of reform, the expansion of the state and forms of governance, and the development of American liberalism. Professor Pearson is the author of two prize-winning books, including The Birth Certificate: An American History. She has also published essays and articles in The Journal of American History, History and Theory, The Journal of Social History, Modern American History, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.