The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government or any state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black freedmen. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black male voters was important for the party's future. On February 26, 1869, after rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Republicans proposed a compromise amendment which would ban franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. After surviving a difficult ratification fight and opposition from Democrats, the amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the Constitution on March 30, 1870. According to the Library of Congress, in the House of Representatives 144 Republicans voted to approve the 15th Amendment, with zero Democrats in favor, 39 no votes, and seven abstentions. In the Senate, 33 Republicans voted to approve, again with zero Democrats in favor.

United States Supreme Court decisions in the late nineteenth century interpreted the amendment narrowly. From 1890 to 1910, the Democratic Party in the Southern United States adopted new state constitutions and enacted "Jim Crow" laws that raised barriers to voter registration. This resulted in most black voters and many Poor Whites being disenfranchised by poll taxes and literacy tests, among other barriers to voting, from which white male voters were exempted by grandfather clauses. A system of white primaries and violent intimidation by Democrats through the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) also suppressed black participation. Although the fifteenth amendment is "self-executing" the Court emphasized that the right granted to be free from racial discrimination could be enforced by congressional enactments when necessary.

In the twentieth century, the Court began to interpret the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v. United States (1915) and dismantling the white primary system created by the Democratic Party in the "Texas primary cases" (1927–1953). Voting rights were further incorporated into the Constitution in the Nineteenth Amendment (voting rights for women, effective 1920), the Twenty-fourth Amendment (prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections, effective 1964) and the Twenty-sixth Amendment (lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, effective 1971). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided federal oversight of elections in discriminatory jurisdictions, banned literacy tests and similar discriminatory devices, and created legal remedies for people affected by voting discrimination. The Court also found poll taxes in state elections unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966).

Text

upright=0.85|thumb|The Fifteenth Amendment in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]]

Background

In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of black former slaves freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, the latter of which had formally abolished slavery. Following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment by Congress, however, Republicans grew concerned over the increase it would create in the congressional representation of the Democratic-dominated Southern states. Because the full population of freed slaves would be now counted rather than the three-fifths mandated by the previous Three-Fifths Compromise, the Southern states would dramatically increase their power in the population-based House of Representatives. Republicans hoped to offset this advantage by attracting and protecting votes of the newly enfranchised black population.

In 1865, Congress passed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing citizenship without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude. The bill also guaranteed equal benefits and access to the law, a direct assault on the Black Codes passed by many post-war Southern states. The Black Codes attempted to return ex-slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, prohibiting them from owning firearms, and preventing them from suing or testifying in court. Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the bill, President Johnson vetoed it on March 27, 1866. In his veto message, he objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented in the Congress, and that it allegedly discriminated in favor of African Americans and against whites. Three weeks later, Johnson's veto was overridden and the measure became law. Despite this victory, even some Republicans who had supported the goals of the Civil Rights Act began to doubt that Congress possessed the constitutional power to turn those goals into laws. The experience encouraged both radical and moderate Republicans to seek Constitutional guarantees for black rights, rather than relying on temporary political majorities.

On June 18, 1866, Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the laws regardless of race, and sent it to the states for ratification. After a bitter struggle that included attempted rescissions of ratification by two states, the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted on July 28, 1868.

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment punished, by reduced representation in the House of Representatives, any state that disenfranchised any male citizens over 21 years of age. By failing to adopt a harsher penalty, this signaled to the states that they still possessed the right to deny ballot access based on race. Northern states were generally as averse to granting voting rights to blacks as Southern states. In the year of its ratification, only eight Northern states allowed blacks to vote. In the South, blacks were able to vote in many areas, but only through the intervention of the occupying Union Army. Before Congress had granted suffrage to blacks in the territories by passing the Territorial Suffrage Act on January 10, 1867 (Source: Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 381–82), blacks were granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia on January 8, 1867.

Proposal and ratification

Proposal

thumb|upright=1.05|"The First Vote" by [[Alfred Waud|Alfred R. Waud (Harper's Weekly, 1867) depicting African Americans casting ballots]]

Anticipating an increase in Democratic membership in the following Congress, Republicans used the lame-duck session of the 40th United States Congress to pass an amendment protecting black suffrage. Representative John Bingham, the primary author of the Fourteenth Amendment, pushed for a wide-ranging ban on suffrage limitations, but a broader proposal banning voter restriction on the basis of "race, color, nativity, property, education, or religious beliefs" was rejected. A proposal to specifically ban literacy tests was also rejected.

The vote in the House was 144 to 44, with 35 not voting. The House vote was almost entirely along party lines, with no Democrats supporting the bill and only 3Republicans voting against it, some because they thought the amendment did not go far enough in its protections. The House of Representatives passed the amendment, with 143 Republicans and oneConservative Republican voting "Yea" and 39 Democrats, three Republicans, oneIndependent Republican and oneConservative voting "No"; 26 Republicans, eightDemocrats, and oneIndependent Republican did not vote. The final vote in the Senate was 39 to 13, with 14 not voting. The Senate passed the amendment, with 39 Republicans voting "Yea" and eightDemocrats and five Republicansvoting "Nay"; 13 Republicans and oneDemocrat did not vote. Some Radical Republicans, such as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, abstained from voting because the amendment did not prohibit literacy tests and poll taxes. Following congressional approval, the proposed amendment was then sent by Secretary of State William Henry Seward to the states for ratification or rejection.]]

Though many of the original proposals for the amendment had been moderated by negotiations in committee, the final draft nonetheless faced significant hurdles in being ratified by three-fourths of the states. Historian William Gillette wrote of the process, "it was hard going and the outcome was uncertain until the very end." However, with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which had explicitly protected only male citizens in its second section, activists found the civil rights of women divorced from those of blacks. Matters came to a head with the proposal of the Fifteenth Amendment, which barred race discrimination but not sex discrimination in voter laws. One of Congress's most explicit discussions regarding the link between suffrage and officeholding occurred during discussions about the Fifteenth Amendment.

  1. Nevada: March 1, 1869
  2. West Virginia: March 3, 1869
  3. North Carolina: March 5, 1869
  4. Illinois: March 5, 1869
  5. Louisiana: March 5, 1869
  6. Michigan: March 8, 1869
  7. Wisconsin: March 9, 1869
  8. Maine: March 11, 1869
  9. Massachusetts: March 12, 1869
  10. Arkansas: March 15, 1869
  11. South Carolina: March 15, 1869
  12. Pennsylvania: March 25, 1869
  13. New York: April 14, 1869 (Rescinded ratification: January 5, 1870; re-ratified: March 30, 1970)
  14. Indiana: May 14, 1869
  15. Connecticut: May 19, 1869
  16. Florida: June 14, 1869
  17. New Hampshire: July 1, 1869
  18. Virginia: October 8, 1869
  19. Vermont: October 20, 1869
  20. Alabama: November 16, 1869
  21. Missouri: January 10, 1870
  22. Minnesota: January 13, 1870
  23. Mississippi: January 17, 1870
  24. Rhode Island: January 18, 1870
  25. Kansas: January 19, 1870
  26. Ohio: January 27, 1870 (after rejection: April 1/30, 1869)
  27. Georgia: February 2, 1870
  28. Iowa: February 3, 1870

Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certified the amendment on March 30, 1870, also including the ratifications of:

The remaining seven states all subsequently ratified the amendment:

The amendment's adoption was met with widespread celebrations in black communities and abolitionist societies; many of the latter disbanded, feeling that black rights had been secured and their work was complete. President Grant said of the amendment that it "completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came to life."

Application

In the year of the 150th anniversary of the Fifteenth Amendment Columbia University history professor and historian Eric Foner said about the Fifteenth Amendment as well as its history during the Reconstruction era and Post-Reconstruction era: