The Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 gave African Americans the right to vote in the
South. However, they still lacked the vote in most northern states. Also, there was
concern that the gains they had made would be lost if the white Southern Democrats
ever gained control of Congress. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
states that the right to vote cannot be denied by reason of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude, was passed in order to deal with these concerns. It was passed by
Congress on February 26, 1869, and ratified by the states on March 30, 1870. Had
the 15thAmendment been enforced, African Americans would have been able to protect
their civil rights. But it was not enforced, and the Ku Klux Klan managed to destroy the
black vote in the South by murdering thousands of African Americans who voted, ran
for office, or took leading roles in the community. When the Civil War ended, General
Grant had allowed Confederate soldiers to keep their weapons, with the result that the
black community was not only outnumbered but outgunned. The most famous case of
black resistance took place in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873 and ended with the deaths of
280 African Americans. The political impact of all this violence was unmistakable. In
1873, black-supported Republican Governor Adelbert Ames carried Yazoo, Mississippi,
by 1,800 votes. Two years later, the Democrats won Yazoo with a vote of 4,044 to seven.
Where blacks did win, they were often forced to resign under threat of death.
End of Reconstruction
The election of President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 brought Reconstruction to
an end. Federal troops—who were often the only protection the blacks had—were
withdrawn from the South, and the state governments were left in white Democratic
hands. Since the Fifteenth Amendment had guaranteed African Americans the right to
vote, the southern states could not simply deny them the ballot. They could, however,
through fraud and legal technicalities, make it almost impossible for blacks to meet
voting qualifications allowing them to register. This was achieved through such devices
as grandfather clauses, literacy requirements, the poll tax, the white primary, and a
denial of the vote to persons convicted of various crimes. Denying the vote to convicts
enabled registrars to exclude thousands of African Americans who had been convicted of
petty theft or other minor offenses. Sometimes, these people were, in fact, guilty. Often,
however, they were innocent men who had been jailed as a result of a dispute with a
white person. What the whites could not control through law, they accomplished
through violence, economic pressure, vote manipulation, and outright fraud. The
destruction of the democratic process affected whites as well. Constitutional rights do
not exist in a vacuum—they are protected to a large extent by the fact that other people
have the same rights. In order to uphold a racist system that denied basic rights to
African Americans, the rights of all individuals had to suffer. Among those rights most
damaged by racial prejudice were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom
of assembly. Anyone, black or white, who spoke out against injustice and discrimination
risked being beaten or killed. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, various black individuals, and other civil rights organizations continued to work
through the political and judicial systems to overturn the legal obstacles, and some
progress was made including the outlawing of grandfather clauses (1915) and the white
primary (1944). However, the basic situation remained unchanged until the Civil Rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Following the abolition of slavery, women activists focused on their own rights.
Women generally had more rights in the new western states: in most states they could
own property and keep their own wages. The first states to allow women to vote were in
the West, including Wyoming in 1869 and Utah in 1870. In the late 19th century, women
built a campaign for the right to vote throughout the United States.
Changes to the Law
The 14th and 15th amendments had a huge impact on the campaign for the right
to vote. The 14th Amendment gave equal rights to all citizens, while
the 15th Amendmentallowed black men to vote; voters were defined in the law as males.
The discussions over the 15th Amendment in the late 1860s caused a division
among women activists. Some, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, believed they should not
support the 15thAmendment unless women as well as black men gained the vote.
Others, including Lucy Stone, thought that giving African-American men the vote was a
good first step, which would make it easier to argue that suffrage should be extended to
women too. In 1869, two organizations were formed, reflecting the two different
opinions: National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and American Woman
Suffrage Association (AWSA).
References and Further Information
Avins, Alfred, comp. The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates: The Legislative History and
Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Richmond: Virginia
Commission on Constitutional Government, 1967. [Catalog Record]
Darling, Marsha J. Tyson, ed. Race, Voting, Redistricting, and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations
on the Fifteenth Amendment. New York: Routledge. [Catalog Record]
Gillette, William. The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1969. [Catalog Record]
Hay, Jeff, ed. Amendment XV: Race and the Right to Vote. Farmington Hills, Mich: Greenhaven Press,
2009. [Catalog Record]
Maltz, Earl M. Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863-1869. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press
of Kansas, 1990. [Catalog Record]
Mathews, John Mabry. Legislative and Judicial History of the Fifteenth Amendment. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1909. [Catalog Record] [Full Text]
Younger Readers
Banfield, Susan. The Fifteenth Amendment: African-American Men's Right to Vote. Springfield, N.J.:
Enslow Publishers, 1998. [Catalog Record]
Burgan, Michael. The Reconstruction Amendments. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2006. [Catalog
Record]