In 1870 the 15th Amendment was passed: 1. 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. Unfortunately this only applied to men 21 and older. In order to limit voting rights states implemented all kinds of tests and other criteria which had to be passed in order to vote. in 1965 Lyndon Johnson proposed “The Voting Rights Act of 1965” limiting the power of states to change their voting laws to restrict who could vote. It wasn’t until the early 70’s however that most blacks were able to actually vote freely.
Formally, black men were allowed to vote in the first elections after The Civil War. I could be wrong about the exact election. However, during Reconstruction, many former slaves and other African Americans were elected to office. If you followed the recent Senate race in Tennessee, there was much discussion about the fact that if Ford had won he would have been the first African American elected to the Senate from the former Confederate states to be elected since Reconstruction. Formally, all African Americans of age (21 until 1971 when the voting age was lowered to 18) were allowed to vote after women were allowed to vote in 1920. Having the rights on paper did not stop many whites throughout the country (especially in the South) from disenfranchising African Americans through multiple means from threats to denying polling places to outright destruction of ballots cast. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 eradicated all local laws or other hindrances to voting for African-Americans. PBS is
Well, that requires a survey of most of the history of the United States. So I’ll outline it and you can ask a follow-up about the parts you’re interested in. In 1789, African-Americans were defined in the Constitution as 3/5 of a person for counting representation, and could not vote at all. (Constitution’s Article 1, section 2, and elsewhere) In 1865, following the Civil War, African-Americans were given the right to vote and the “3/5ths clause” was rescinded. (14th and 15th Amendment). The clause relevant to your question is the 15th Amendment, article 1: “The right… to vote shall not be denied or abridged… on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” (the “previous condition of servitude” meant that states couldn’t deny the right to vote to those who had been slaves). For 90 years thereafter, states did all sorts of things to abridge the right to vote for African-Americans. The main means were seemingly “objective” criteria like “literacy laws,” which require
In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified. It stated 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.” More than a half-million black men became voters in the South during the 1870s (women did not secure the right to vote in the United States until 1920). For the most part, these new black voters cast their ballots solidly for the Republican Party, the party of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.