What was the Fourteenth Amendment intended to accomplish and in what ways did the Supreme Court in the late nineteenth century limit its protections?

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, was intended to guarantee citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, particularly former slaves after the Civil War. However, the Supreme Court limited its protections in the late nineteenth century through rulings such as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine, and United States v. Cruikshank (1876), which ruled that the federal government could not protect citizens from private acts of discrimination. These decisions significantly undermined the Amendment's promise of equality and civil rights.