15th Amendment

The Fifteenth Amendment The Fifteenth Amendment to the constitution gives African American men the right to vote. The Amendment declares that the right of citizens of the United States cannot be denied the right to vote for anything including: race, color, or past condition of servitude. Not only did it grant African Americans the right to vote but also granted them as equal citizens. This amendment took many years to be ratified. Many states hated the idea of African Americans having the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870. The amendment wasn’t fully realized for almost a century. Some states resisted ratification. During one point ratification count was at 11 Republican States approving and four Democratic states rejecting, which means Congress needed 11 more states to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment before it could become a law. Many states did not the idea of this Amendment. Many believed that African Americans were not educated enough to have the right to vote. Southern States weren’t very happy with this new amendment. They did everything in their power to not ratify this amendment. It took the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before most African Americans in the south were able to vote. Southerners found many ways to try to keep the African Americans from voting. Many southerners turned to violence. The Klu Klux Klan was formed and the whites who refused to accept the African Americans as equal gained their strength by torturing and killing many African Americans. Violence I believe was the only way the southerners thought they could have total control over the African Americans. They could care less about how many people they were hurting with such violence. Many African Americans could not read nor write. This gave whites something else to complain about. There were also many whites who couldn’t read or write either. They did not care that the whites were alliterate though. Southerners just wanted more