Celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the 15th Amendment

This February 3rd marked the 150th anniversary of the ratification of fifteenth Modification to the Structure. The fifteenth 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 point out on account of race, color, or preceding affliction of servitude.”

 

For a brief interval of time following its ratification, African-American gentlemen ended up equipped to vote. The new influx of African-American voters brought sweeping changes in the South, such as the increase of the Republican Party and the election of Sen. Hiram R. Revels, the initial of a dozen African-American gentlemen to provide in Congress during the Reconstruction Era.

 

Sadly, as the 1870s drew to an end, so did the enforcement of the Constitutional protections granted by the fifteenth and 14th Amendments. By way of the use of poll taxes, disparate software of literacy and citizenship take a look at, Jim Crow Guidelines, violence and intimidation, lots of states undermined the Structure and denied the vote to African-Individuals, after yet again.

 

It wasn’t until finally the passage of the Voting Legal rights Act of 1965 signed by Lyndon B. Johnson nearly a century later, that the fifteenth Modification commenced to be enforced. In 1964, the twenty fourth Modification banned poll taxes in Federal elections, and in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overruled prior scenario law and established that point out poll taxes are unconstitutional.

 

February is National African American Record Month, and this year’s concept is the “African Individuals and the Vote.” Moreover, this yr marks not only the sesquicentennial of the fifteenth Modification but the centennial of the nineteenth Modification, which certain gals the suitable to vote. Let us get this opportunity to try to remember the function that prior generations have finished to safeguard our democracy and rejoice by registering to vote and voting in the California main elections on March 3rd!

 

 

Also, halt by our African American Record Month display screen in the 1st ground display screen scenario at our Downtown site. Also, you can click  Below for more information about the impression employed in this post!

 

 

The put up Celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the fifteenth Modification appeared initial on San Diego Regulation Library.