Amendment XV

Amendment XV

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.

Section 1 states that citizens cannot be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or whether they used to be a slave or not.
Section 2 backs up the first section by only stating that Congress had the power to enforce the legislation however they felt.

This controversial amendment gave Blacks the right to vote, however it did not make the discriminatory laws created in the South illegal in regards to voting. Therefore, although Blacks had gained the right to vote, they still suffered at the hands of poll tax laws which made literacy and wealth a necessity in order to vote—something not many Blacks had at that time. This amendment left enough slack for Southern states to draft up several discriminatory laws that inevitably kept Blacks from voting. Not to mention the KKK, which started around the end of Reconstruction in order to use intimidation and violence to scare Blacks into not voting. While section 1 provides opportunity, section two enables the limitedness of that opportunity.



This video displays lynching during American history. The worst part is that these are supposedly postcards that people collect and send to each other. I wanted to include this video because although the 15th Amendment gave former slaves the right to vote, it created uproar of hate in the South who didn’t want Blacks to vote. It is during this time that the KKK was birthed in order to intimidate Blacks and prevent them from voting. This amendment also saw the creation of poll taxes and literacy tests and other discriminatory laws put into place to keep blacks from voting. Lynchings were not only present during slavery, they took place largely after. After the 15th Amendment was ratified, Blacks and America had a long was to go until Blacks were freely allowed to vote without the threat of harm.



This video was very interesting because it talks about how Democrats were the ones who created the poll taxes and grandfather clauses, and who created the KKK, and that it was the Republicans who voted to free slaves and pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. I think that its interesting how Blacks are highly represented in the Democratic Party, yet this is the same party who, at first, tried to prevent Blacks from being able to vote in the first place.