Drawing from Southern University
*On this date in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. This guaranteed African American men the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment maintains "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by a State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The text also gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment.
Although Blacks had been freed from American slavery and made citizens after the American Civil War by the 13th and 14th Amendments, Southern states used various tactics, including violence, to keep Blacks from voting, and even some Northern states had not given Blacks the franchise. Radical Republicans in Congress proposed the 15th Amendment to rectify this problem.
Most blacks and whites alike believed that the franchise was the best guarantee for progress and success for freed people. Most whites felt the right to participate in the political process was all the nation-owed former slaves wanted. But debate immediately arose over how strongly worded the amendment should be. Many Republicans feared the South would keep Blacks from voting through poll taxes and violence. Other Republicans believed that all states — Northern and Southern — should have the right to keep illiterate citizens from voting. Fears of the growing influence of foreign immigrants popularized the literacy test to limit their power.
The resulting compromise was the 14th Amendment, which was ratified with the help of Reconstruction governments in the South, but soon proved incapable of guaranteeing permission for Blacks. Not until the 20th century would the Supreme Court invoke the 15th Amendment in striking down state grandfather clauses and white primaries. But such changes had little effect on Black voting; during World War II, only 5 percent of Southern Blacks were registered to vote. Not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did discrimination in voting begin to end, and courts enforced the 15th Amendment.
Add to this the debate over the 2000 presidential vote count in Florida, and there seems to be still room for proper rights at the ballot box for African Americans. This movement was supported in diversity influence in the 2008 and 2012 presidential votes and was suppressed again in 2016 and the mid-terms in 2018.
