Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was one of those additives that were added after the Civil War. It was submitted on February 3, 1870 to ratify and forbade a person because of their ethnicity, skin color or their former status as slaves to deny the right to vote.

Verbatim

"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. "

" The right of citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or former Dienstbarkeitsverhältnisses. "

Meaning and History

The main purpose of this addition is to grant former slaves full voting rights. In fact, he was fully implemented but only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The first U.S. citizen who was allowed to choose due to this addition, Thomas Mundy Peterson was.

After the additions slavery was abolished 13 and 14, and the former slaves citizens' rights were guaranteed, the Republicans were afraid still, supporters of the Confederacy in the Southern states could maintain their influence by not leaving select freed slaves or blacks. In most southern states pertinent laws were valid. Through the constitutional prohibition of such exclusion, the Republicans but also hoped to win the sympathy of the blacks and so the dominance of the Democrats in the South ( see Solid South ) to break.

After the entry into force of the 15 addition, there was a brief period of intense political participation of black people, which was purely numerically not achieved to date again. Both in terms of population as well as in absolute numbers, more African- Americans were elected to political office Between 1865 and 1880 than in any other period in American history. Although there were no black governors, but some parliaments in the southern states were practically dominated African- American at that time. These parliaments adopted programs that were viewed at the time as radical, such as the abolition of racial segregation in schools. Also, they took up the breed discriminatory laws including the prohibition of mixed marriages.

However, to prevent the blacks to participate in the elections, led some states so-called poll taxes ( tax election ) a; a levy, which had to pay the voters to get the right to vote. A so-called grandfather clause ( grandfather clause ) took such voters from the tax, whose fathers and grandfathers were eligible to vote in the state already. Many blacks and also tend to be more friendly black white immigrants from the northern states were poor and could not afford this poll tax, most native whites who were set tend to be hostile to black, were liberated by the grandfather clause of the tax. This form of indirect discrimination was solved only in 1964 by the addition of 24.