The Fifteenth Amendment: Suffrage for Black Men

The Fourteenth Amendment did not explicitly grant the vote to African American men, although it decreased congressional representation for states that denied men the vote. Congress debated proposals for an amendment forbidding discrimination in voting based on race, and some Americans argued that women’s suffrage should also be included. But the amendment passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870 did not mention gender. As a result, it benefited only men until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. And, for almost one hundred years after its ratification, the Fifteenth Amendment offered very little protection to African American men, either.

SECTION 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.

States sought many ways to subvert the Fifteenth Amendment for persons of color. They passed discriminatory laws regarding voting that did not mention race, yet had the effect of racial discrimination. One tactic was grandfather clauses, which allowed voters registered before the Fifteenth Amendment-or their descendants-to skip literacy tests. The Supreme Court struck down such grandfather clauses in 1915. Whites also tried to exclude blacks from political party conventions and primaries, claiming that they were private associations not regulated by the Fifteenth Amendment.

But in Terry v. Adams (1953) the Court held that the Fifteenth Amendment applied to any election where a public official was chosen.

The Supreme Court has also extended Fifteenth Amendment protection to races other than African Americans. In Rice n Cayetano (2000), the Court struck down a Hawaii law limiting voters for a state office to those whose ancestors lived in Hawaii before 1778, when Europeans first encountered the islands.

Even though the state office administered funds designated for such Hawaiians, the Court ruled that the Hawaii law violated the Fifteenth Amendment. Although the law did not specifically mention race, the Supreme Court held that it clearly limited the ballot to voters of a certain race or ancestry.

SECTION 2

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Congress enacted the Enforcement Act in 1870 to carry out the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment, but to little effect. With the end of Reconstruction in f 876, and the Jim Crow laws enacted thereafter to discriminate against African Americans, southern states largely succeeded in keeping blacks away from the polls.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a massive civil rights movement sought to register African Americans to vote and change segregation laws. Leaders of the movement also wanted to pressure U.S. officials to support new laws strengthening voting rights. One of the key events in this movement was a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965. Before the march, only one percent of the African Americans of voting age in Selma were registered. Alabama state troopers on horseback attacked the marchers, and a week later President Lyndon Johnson submitted his voting rights bill to Congress.

Enacted five months later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited literacy tests, allowed federal officials to supervise voter registration, and outlawed the dilution of minority voter strength in drawing the boundaries