In honor of Black History Month, all month long we will be sharing the legacies and stories of the heroes, sheroes, and events in the fight for Black suffrage on social media under the hashtag #VRABlackHistory. Follow us on Twitter (@VRAmatters) to share your own facts.
Today we honor the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlaws discrimination in voting rights on the basis of race, color, and previous condition of servitude; thereby advancing suffrage for African Americans (although only men could vote at that time). This was the last and most hard fought for of all the Reconstruction Congress' Constitutional Amendments to confer full citizenship upon the formerly enslaved. The intention of this amendment was to codify, permanently, the right to vote for all freed men. Immediately, the impact of this amendment proved transformative as freed men exercised the right to vote, and in coalition, elected several hundred African-Americans to office throughout the nation.
African-American men seeking to vote were often met with obstacles, brutal opposition, and skepticism; yet, still they participated in the franchise in record numbers.
Due to the infamous 1877 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, which- among other things- removed the federal troops from the South, this period of African-American voting power lasted only from 1870-1901. Although brief, this era of voting would be instrumental in inspiring the continued fight for Black suffrage for decades to come.
The legal power of the Fifteenth Amendment would be largely dormant for many years until its rejuvenation in the modern Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century.
