Kermit Roosevelt III of the Law School wrote about Martin Luther King Jr.’s lesser-known speech, “The Negro and he Constitution,” which argued that “American values” were more shaped by the ratification of the 14th Amendment than by the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “The values we must carry forward are not those of Thomas Jefferson and the Framers of the Constitution; they are the values of Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction Congress,” wrote Roosevelt.
https://time.com/6139406/martin-luther-king-jr-changed-his-mind-america/ Time