15. Amendment to the United States Constitution

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15. Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment . Poster from 1870, which celebrated the “passing” of the 15th additional article and the resulting advantages for people of color

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is one of those amendments that were added after the Civil War . He became the on February 3, 1870 ratification submitted and forbade a person because of their ethnic origin, their skin color or their former status as a slave the right to vote to deny.

Literally

Section 1.

"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 to vote for citizens of the United States may not be denied or restricted by the United States or any state on the basis of race, skin color, or previous easement."

Meaning and history

The main purpose of this addition is to give the ex-slaves full voting rights. In fact, it wasn't fully implemented until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The first US citizen to vote on the basis of this addition was Thomas Mundy Peterson.

After amendments 13 and 14 abolished slavery and granted former slaves civil rights, Republicans continued to fear that Confederate supporters in the southern states could maintain their influence by not allowing freed slaves or blacks to vote. Most of the southern states had such laws. With the constitutional prohibition of such exclusion, the Republicans also hoped to win the sympathy of blacks and thus break the dominance of the Democrats in the south (see Solid South ).

After the 15th Amendment came into force, there was a brief phase of strong political participation by the black population, which has not yet been achieved in terms of numbers. In both population and absolute terms, 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 yet, some parliaments in the southern states were practically dominated by African American at the time. These parliaments passed programs that were considered radical at the time, such as the desegregation in schools. They also repealed the racial discrimination laws including the prohibition of mixed marriages .

To prevent blacks from voting, some states introduced poll taxes - levies that voters had to pay in order to get the right to vote. A so-called grandfather clause exempted those voters from the tax whose fathers and grandfathers were already eligible to vote in the state. Many blacks and also the tendency towards black-friendly white immigrants from the northern states were poor and could not afford this poll tax ; most of the native whites, who tended to be anti-black, were exempt from tax through the grandfather clause. This form of indirect discrimination was not eliminated until 1964 with the 24th Amendment .

See also

literature

  • William Gillette: The right to vote: politics and the passage of the fifteenth amendment , Volume 83, Issue 1, Johns Hopkins Press, 1965 ( books.google.de )
  • Vanessa A. Holloway: In Search of Federal Enforcement: The Moral Authority of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Integrity of the Black Ballot, 1870-1965. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 ( books.google.de )
  • Everette Swinney: Enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870-1877. In: The Journal of Southern History , Vol. 28, No. May 2, 1962, pp. 202-218 ( JSTOR 2205188 )

Web links

Wikisource: Additional amendments to the United States Constitution  - Sources and full texts (English)
Wikisource: German text of the 15th constitutional amendment  - sources and full texts
Commons : 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution  - Collection of Images