Amendment XV (15)

Amendment XV

Ratified February 3, 1870

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--

Section 2.
     The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

     The fifteenth amendment is very important because it gave African Americans the right to vote. This was apart of the Reconstruction Amendments, which also include the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, and is the third and last of them. These amendments were important in implementing the reconstruction of the south five years immediately following the civil war. Although African Americans were now allowed to vote, that didn't mean that they really were completely 'free'. Many whites in the South tried different tactics in order to keep the blacks from being able to vote. New constitutions and laws created obstacles for the blacks. Poll taxes and discriminatory literacy test had to be taken for the blacks. The whites ended up being exempt from such tests, due to the grandfather clauses. Eventually these grandfather clauses were struck down, which were entailed in the twenty-fourth amendment.

     This picture depicts a free African American man casting his vote. The fifteenth amendment gave African American men the right to vote, which was also part of the reconstruction.


     The fifteenth amendment gave African American men the right to vote, after this amendment had passed, women were beginning to wonder when their time would come to also have equal life and liberty. That is why I chose this picture for the fifteenth amendment. What these women don't know, is that their time is coming very soon.