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Nadra Kareem Nittle is a journalist with bylines in The Atlantic, Vox, and The New York Times. Her reporting focuses education, race, and public policy.
Updated on October 25, 2020The 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, extended the right to vote to Black American men seven years after the emancipation proclamation deemed the enslaved population free. Giving Black men voting rights was yet another way for the federal government to recognize them as full American citizens.
The amendment stated:
“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.”
However, fierce racial discrimination that would last for several decades effectively prevented Black American men from realizing their constitutional rights. It would take the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to eliminate the obstacles, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and retaliation from employers that disenfranchised Black American men and women alike. However, the Voting Rights Act, too, has faced challenges in recent years.
Black Americans were staunch supporters of the slain President Abraham Lincoln, the Republican politician who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. After his assassination in 1865, Lincoln’s popularity grew, and Black Americans expressed their gratitude to him by becoming loyal supporters of the Republican Party. The 15th Amendment allowed Black men to use their votes to give Republicans an edge over rival political parties.
The North American 19th-century Black activist Frederick Douglass actively worked for Black male suffrage and tried to make the case for it in his public remarks about the issue. He acknowledged that anti-Black stereotypes had fostered the idea that Black Americans were too ignorant to vote.
“It is said that we are ignorant; admit it,” Douglass said. “But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag for the government, he knows enough to vote . What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.”
A man named Thomas Mundy Peterson from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first Black American to vote in an election after the 15th Amendment was enacted. Newly given the right to vote, Black men quickly influenced the American political scene, allowing Republicans to usher in sweeping change across the former Confederacy, which was part of the Union once more. These changes included getting Black men, such as Hiram Rhodes Revels, elected in Southern states. Revels was a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, and distinguished himself by becoming the first Black American elected to the U.S. Congress. During the period after the Civil War, known as Reconstruction, many Black Americans served as elected officials in state legislatures and local governments.
When Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s, however, Southern lawmakers worked to render Black Americans second-class citizens again. They flouted both the 14th and 15th Amendments, which recognized Black Americans as U.S. citizens and granted them voting rights, respectively. This shift stemmed from Rutherford B. Hayes' 1876 presidential election, in which a disagreement over electoral votes led Republicans and Democrats to make a compromise that sacrificed Black suffrage. This agreement, called the Compromise of 1877, was that Hayes would remove troops from southern states in exchange for the support of Democrats. Without troops to enforce Black civil rights, governing power was restored to the White majority and Black Americans faced severe oppression once again.
To say this agreement had a detrimental effect on Black male suffrage would be an understatement. In 1890, Mississippi held a constitutional convention designed to restore "white supremacy" and adopted a constitution that would disenfranchise Black and poor White voters alike for years to come. This was done by requiring applicants to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test in order to vote and was not seen as unconstitutional at the time because it also affected White citizens. The 15th Amendment was essentially erased in Jim Crow Mississippi.
In the end, Black men were technically American citizens but could not exercise their right to vote. Those who did manage to pass the literacy tests and pay the poll taxes were often threatened by White people when they arrived at the polls. In addition, large numbers of Black Americans in the South worked as sharecroppers and faced the threat of eviction from landlords who objected to Black suffrage. In some cases, Black men were beaten, killed, or had their homes burned down for attempting to vote. Several other states followed Mississippi's lead and Black registration and voting took a nosedive across the south. Voting as a Black American in the Jim Crow South often meant putting one’s life and livelihood on the line.
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. Civil rights activists had worked diligently to secure voting rights for Black Americans, and federal legislation eliminated the local and state policies that effectively blocked people of color from casting ballots. White civic leaders and polling officials could no longer use literacy tests and poll taxes to deter Black people from voting, and the federal government granted the U.S. attorney general the power to conduct probes into the use of such methods during elections.
Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the federal government began to review the voter registration process in places where most of the minority population had not signed up to vote. By the end of 1965, more than 250,000 Black Americans had been registered to vote.
But the Voting Rights Act didn’t reverse the challenges Black voters faced overnight. Some jurisdictions simply ignored the federal legislation on voting rights. Still, activists and advocacy groups could now pursue legal action when the rights of Black voters were violated or ignored. After the Voting Rights Act’s enactment, record numbers of Black voters began to vote for the politicians, Black or White, who they felt advocated for their interests.
In the 21st century, voting rights remain an issue of pressing concern for voters of color. Voter suppression efforts continue to be a problem. Voter ID laws, long lines, and poor conditions in voting precincts in minority communities, as well as the disenfranchisement of convicted felons, have all undermined the efforts of people of color to vote.
Stacey Abrams, a 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate, insists that voter suppression cost her the election. In a 2020 interview, Abrams said that voters face systemic barriers in states across the country during the election process and that the cost of voting is too high for many. She started the organization Fair Fight Action to address voting rights in the U.S. today.
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