Section 2. It states that “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.” [71][72], Congress used its authority pursuant to Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, achieving further racial equality in voting. But not until the 1960s did judicial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment conclude the right to vote was a fundamental right of all citizens.. The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 15 (15th Amendment). By 1976, sixty-three percent of Southern blacks were registered to vote, a figure only five percent less than that for Southern whites. The Fifteenth Amendment Important Cases; This was the last of the Reconstruction Amendments, those amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War. [48][67] The Court later relied on this decision in Rice v. Cayetano (2000),[68] which struck down ancestry-based voting in elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs; the ruling held that the elections violated the Fifteenth Amendment by using "ancestry as a racial definition and for a racial purpose". Section 2 [Transportation of intoxicating liquors.] [26][28] The House of Representatives passed the amendment, with 143 Republicans and one Conservative Republican voting "Yea" and 39 Democrats, three Republicans, one Independent Republican and one Conservative voting "No"; 26 Republicans, eight Democrats, and one Independent Republican did not vote. Now it is not. The Black Codes attempted to return ex-slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, prohibiting them from owning firearms, and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court. Ratification. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that 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." The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War. The Enforcement Acts were passed by Congress in 1870–1871 to authorize federal prosecution of the KKK and others who violated the amendment. It declared that all male citizens over twenty-one years old should be able to vote. Before its adoption, this could be done. Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. The Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government did not have the authority to prosecute the perpetrators of the Colfax massacre because they were not state actors. A number of blacks were killed at the Colfax massacre of 1873 while attempting to defend their right to vote. Contents. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment affirmed that the right to vote “shall not be denied…on account of race.” This resulted in most black voters and many poor white ones being disenfranchised by poll taxes and discriminatory literacy tests, among other barriers to voting, from which white male voters were exempted by grandfather clauses. Sections that are linked have since been amended or superseded. In his veto message, he objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented in the Congress, and that it discriminated in favor of African Americans and against whites. 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. It was as much within the power of a State to exclude citizens of the United States from voting on account of race, &c., as it was on account of age, property, or education. [59][60] However, in United States v. Classic (1941),[61] the Court ruled that primary elections were an essential part of the electoral process, undermining the reasoning in Grovey. Once he committed to his belief in the Constitution as a valid document, he used it as a tool in his arsenal to advocate for the freedom, and later the civil rights of African Americans and women. "[2] To attract the broadest possible base of support, the amendment made no mention of poll taxes or other measures to block voting, and did not guarantee the right of blacks to hold office. [69], After judicial enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment ended grandfather clauses, white primaries, and other discriminatory tactics, Southern black voter registration gradually increased, rising from five percent in 1940 to twenty-eight percent in 1960. Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act required states and local governments with histories of racial discrimination in voting to submit all changes to their voting laws or practices to the federal government for approval before they could take effect, a process called "preclearance". In the United States, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870 during the Reconstruction era, provided that "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 … Electioneering at the South. [21][26] New York, which had ratified on April 14, 1869, tried to revoke its ratification on January 5, 1870. By the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all African Americans in the states of the former Confederacy were again disenfranchised. The Court found in his favor on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, while not discussing his Fifteenth Amendment claim. Section 1. In the year of its ratification, only eight Northern states allowed blacks to vote. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. AMENDMENT XI - Passed by Congress March 4, 1794.Ratified February 7, 1795. In the twentieth century, the Court began to interpret the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v. United States (1915) and dismantling the white primary system in the "Texas primary cases" (1927–1953). The Court ruled in the related case Myers v. Anderson (1915), that the officials who enforced such a clause were liable for civil damages. In United States v. Reese (1876),[42] the first U.S. Supreme Court decision interpreting the Fifteenth Amendment, the Court interpreted the amendment narrowly, upholding ostensibly race-neutral limitations on suffrage including poll taxes, literacy tests, and a grandfather clause that exempted citizens from other voting requirements if their grandfathers had been registered voters. It was ratified on February 3, 1870,[1] as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. The Fifteenth Amendment contains two short sections. Fifteenth Amendment - Right of Citizens to Vote. [22] Both Southern and Northern Republicans also wanted to continue to deny the vote temporarily to Southerners disenfranchised for support of the Confederacy, and they were concerned that a sweeping endorsement of suffrage would enfranchise this group. Nowhere in the original Constitution or the Bill of Rights were Americans given the right to vote. Finally, on March 30, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution. The Sixteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and became ratified on February 3, 1913. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any... Background. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and its subsequent ratification (February 3, 1870) effectively enfranchised African American men while denying the right to vote to women of all colours. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The Fifteenth Amendment was enacted in the United States Constitution in 1870. Section 2. [50], From 1890 to 1910, poll taxes and literacy tests were instituted across the South, effectively disenfranchising the great majority of black men. [10] Despite this victory, even some Republicans who had supported the goals of the Civil Rights Act began to doubt that Congress possessed the constitutional power to turn those goals into laws. "[73] According to the Court, "Regardless of how to look at the record no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the 'pervasive', 'flagrant', 'widespread', and 'rampant' discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the nation." Added to the Constitution in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was the final of the three constitutional amendments enacted during Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War. To many, it felt like the last step of reconstruction. Contents It prohibits the federal government, as well as the individual governments of all of the states, from denying any US citizen the right to vote based on that person’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. [3] Republicans hoped to offset this advantage by attracting and protecting votes of the newly enfranchised black population. "It was ratified on February 3, 1870, [1] as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. After surviving a difficult ratification fight, the amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the Constitution on March 30, 1870. Unlike the 14th Amendment, and more like the 13th Amendment, this amendment has not been the … From the Constitution Here is the text of the Fifteenth Amendment from the Constitution: Section 1. This Amendment was so important because it prohibits the states or the federal government to deny the right to vote to any citizen of the US based on its race or the fact that it was a slave in the past. 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. 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