15th Amendment

 Background

• The 15^th Amendment was the last of the “Reconstruction Amendments” to be adopted. It was passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870 by 18^th President, Ulysses S. Grant. It was to prohibit any discrimination against voters since race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This new amendment sought to protect the rights of African Americans after the Civil War. This guaranteed African American men a right to vote.
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 Reads: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Pros of the Amendment:

• Black men began voting in local, state, and national elections, and ran for political office. 
• Senator Hiram Revels, born actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina became the first African American to serve in the US Senate (1870-71), representing Mississippi during Reconstruction. He was a member of the Republican Party. He supported legislation that would restore the power to vote and to hold office to disenfranchised members of the former Confederacy. During his term he advocated for desegregation in the schools and on the railroads. 
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• Representative Joseph Rainey was born enslaved but became the first African American to serve in the U.S House of Representative representing South Carolina, the first to preside over the House, and the longest- serving Black lawmaker in Congress during Reconstruction (1869-1879). During his legislation, Rainey worked to pass civil rights legislation, fund public schools, and guarantee equal protection under the law. He sought to use his position to advocate for the concerns of African American on the House Floor.

• Their votes and leadership helped create access to jobs, housing, and education for African Americans.

Cons for the Amendment: (W

hite and Black women) 

• Short lived victory 
• Despite the ratification being in 1870, discriminatory practices, known as black codes, were used to prevent Black citizens from exercising their right to vote performed in many Southern States  and exploited them as a labor source
• Disenfranchisement from state and local level 
• Poll taxes
• Made it nearly impossible for many poor black and white sharecroppers, who rarely dealt in cash. 
• Literacy tests

§  40-60% blacks were illiterate compared to 8-18% white. Poor, illiterate whites opposed the tests, realizing that they too would be disenfranchised. To placate them, Southern states adopted an "understanding clause" or a "grandfather clause.”

§  “Grandfather clause”- you could not vote unless your grandfather had voted -- an impossibility for most people whose ancestors were slaves.

• Fraud

§  Ballot box stuffing, throwing out non-Democratic votes, or counting them for the Democrats even when cast for the opposition, was the norm in the Southern states.

§  Intimidation and violence

§  Violence was a principal means of direct disenfranchisement in the South before Redemption. In 1873, a band of whites murdered over 100 blacks who were assembled to defend Republican officeholders against attack in Colfax, Louisiana. 

 

It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson, that made it illegal to deny African Americans their right to vote under the 15th amendment. This act immediately challenged the courts and changed the relationship between the Federal and state governments around voting since the Reconstruction period. By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one-third by Federal examiner. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.