15th amendment
Racial voting protection
The 15th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, ratified in 1870, prohibits denying citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
It was designed to protect voting rights for formerly enslaved Black men after the Civil War, though poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation circumvented it for nearly a century until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- ConstitutionGoverning principles document
- ReconstructionPost-1865 national reunification period
- Bill of RightsInitial constitutional amendments guaranteeing freedoms
- Emancipation ProclamationExecutive order freeing Confederate slaves
- NAACPCivil rights advocacy organization
Martin Luther King Jr. · Civil War · Freedmen's Bureau · Southern Democrats · voting rights · Voting Rights Act · Supreme Court rulings · electoral reforms · Radical Republicans · Freedom Riders · racial equality · race discrimination · federal protection · minority representation · abolitionism · civil rights movement · voter registration drives · civic participation
15th amendmentJim Crow laws
Post-Reconstruction racial separation statutes
poll taxes · voter suppression · literacy tests · grandfather clauses · voter ID laws
15th amendment19th amendment
Granted women voting rights
15th amendmentDred Scott decision
1857 ruling denying Black citizenship
Plessy v. Ferguson · slavery · white supremacy · fugitive slave laws · segregation
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