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On this day in historical past, Feb. 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified — granting African American males the right to vote.
The modification declared that 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.”
As the U.S. National Archives notes, “Set free by the thirteenth Amendment [and] with citizenship assured by the 14th Amendment, Black males got the vote by the 15th Amendment.”
Attorney Ron Coleman, companion at the Dhillon Law Group in New York, advised Fox News Digital about the modification’s ratification, “By guaranteeing the vote to former slaves and prohibiting racial discrimination in elections, the 15th Amendment was a major step toward fulfilling America’s destiny to be what Lincoln called ‘the last best hope of Earth.’”
Added Coleman, “Despite everything, America is still that.”
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, on Feb. 3, 1870, was ratified — in “a major step toward fulfilling America’s destiny to be what Lincoln called ‘the last best hope of Earth.’” (iStock)
The 15th Amendment assured that the right to vote in America couldn’t be denied to anybody based mostly on race.
As the Library of Congress notes, nevertheless, about the ratification, “the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century.”
It provides, “Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans.”
Voters forged their ballots in a college health club in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. (AP Photo/Richard Drew )
It additional says that “it would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.”
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is thought-about certainly one of the most important legal guidelines in the nation’s historical past.
“Prompted by reports of continuing discriminatory voting practices in many southern states,” the National Archives says, “President Lyndon B. Johnson, himself a southerner, urged Congress on March 15, 1965, to pass legislation [that] ‘will make it impossible to thwart the 15th Amendment.’”
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He additionally reminded Congress that “we cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people.”
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