The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
The Last of the Reconstruction Amendments Addresses Voting Rights
Aug 12, 2009
Between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and 1870, the US Constitution was amended three times. The Thirteenth,Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth freed the slaves, the Fourteenth gave them citizenship. The States however maintained the ability to effectively inhibit former slaves from voting.
Three Possible Approaches to Discrimination in Voting
The manner in which to address the problem had three schools of thought in Congress. One group wanted to prohibit States from denying the vote to persons upon the basis of race, color or a previous status as a slave. The second group proposed prohibiting States from denying the vote by setting up literacy, property ownership or status of birth conditions. The third group sought to simply guarantee all male citizens over 21 the right to vote.
The Amendment was proposed by Congress on February 26, 1869, and became part of the Constitution on February 3, 1870 with the ratification by Iowa.
Intent of Fifteenth Amendment Circumvented
Although the Fifteenth Amendment appears quite straight forward as written, its passage did not prevent continuing efforts to prevent African Americans from voting. These efforts took various forms in the former Confederate States. Among these were:
- The White Primary
- Literacy Tests
- Racial Gerrymandering
The White Primary
A primary election is held by political parties to choose their candidates for office. The Fifteenth Amendment applied to the actions of States, not political parties, and for a time, political parties were free to choose their membership, and in many places, Texas in particular, excluded Blacks. Blacks were effectively barred from an important stage of the political process. It was not until 1944 that the US Supreme Court condemned such a practice in Smith v. Allright. Primary elections were found to fall under the Fifteenth Amendment 74 years after it was adopted.
Literacy Tests
In many Slave States it had been illegal to teach slaves to read and write. In another effort to disenfranchise former slaves, several states imposed literacy testing as a qualification for voting. The intended and actual results were that most former slaves were ineligible to vote, since they had been prohibited from learning the skills required to pass such a test. Eventually, in 1949, Fifteenth Amendment protections were used to prohibit tests designed as discriminatory.
Racial Gerrymandering
An additional manner to disenfranchise black voters was by drawing election districts in a fashion that split black populations into very small segments of a district. This type of discrimination ultimately was condemned under the Fifteenth Amendment, but not fully until Mobile v. Bolden in 1980. It had been 110 years in the making.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
While Congress had passed a variety of laws following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, none included significant federal enforcement provisions regarding protections of the voting rights of African Americans. The first real action by Congress to actively enforce the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment was the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Act created a system of federal oversight for those States with a history of voting discrimination, in some instances requiring those States to obtain clearance with the US Justice Department before changing voting laws in any significant manner. The Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. It has been renewed to provide continuing federal oversight of possible voting discrimination in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006.
The Fifteenth Amendment is the source of Congressional authority in the ongoing battle to prevent discrimination against African Americans in exercising the right to vote.
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