Study Curve

It is important to remember that the Fifteenth Amendment did NOT give woman or most male Native Americans voting rights. In fact, after the Union troops were removed from the Southern states at the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870's, it was legally impossible for an African-American adult male to vote in the South due to Jim Crow laws.

The Fifteenth Amendment was passed after the Civil War and gave voting rights to to male citizens no matter their color, race or whether they had been slaves or free. It was passed in 1870. The goal was to give black men the right to become a part of the government process.

Although this amendment said that states and the federal government could not keep people from voting based on color, race and whether or not they had been slaves, many states found ways to prevent these citizens from voting by placing voting taxes and other requirements for voting such as passing a reading test before registering to vote.. A law was passed in 1965, called the Voting Rights Act, that made it illegal to require additional requirements to register to vote.