African Americans And Voting Rights

People always want to demand their essential rights from government’s restriction by passing new laws. There was a period when people demanded their rights in the 1900s. Within the United States, most African Americans’ rights were denied by state governments. Hence, in the 1960s, they took a stand on requiring their rights through the Civil Rights movement around the country. During this movement, the Voting Rights Act was significant and for the reason is that this act gave African Americans a chance to participate in US politics by their votes. Even though the government adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African Americans’ suffrages were still restricted because of southern states’ obstructions.

The 15th amendment states you cannot deprive someone of their right to vote due to their race. This mainly allowed African Americans to vote.

Eventually over time and after a civil war, rights had been given to African Americans through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Although these amendments gave rights, they were met by the force of discrimination, segregation, and the Jim Crow Laws. All of which blocked the rights or freedoms for African Americans. The Jim Crow Laws were laws that disenfranchised African Americans by making them pay a poll tax, pass a literacy test, and by making it to where African Americans could only vote if their grandfather had. This was called the Grandfather Clause.

Although African Americans were free, they were treated as less than a white U.S Citizen. Up until 1870, black people were unable to vote. Ulysses S. Grant despised these injustices and made it his presidential goal to fight for civil rights. On February 3, the 15th Amendment was passed giving African Americans the right to vote. This empowered a new collective of people to voice their opinions.

The African American males were eligible to vote now, but ended up not enjoying their citizenship and rights to vote. All African Americans were granted “The First Vote,”(Document F). They were now citizens and were allowed to vote due to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. This should have been a great moment in history for the blacks, but instead whites made them feel like being a citizen was bad and they hurt and tormented them. The Reconstruction Era negatively affected the South more so than the North politically.

For the first time, African-American men across the country were legally permitted to vote. It was a significant step in the journey toward racial equality. The amendment was ratified in 1870, as the U.S. was struggling to recover from the Civil War. The war had destroyed its unity, ruined its economy, and killed well over one million people.

To accomplish social equality and justice has been a long controversial issue in U.S. history. Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be understood as a tremendous accomplishment today because it not only represent a symbol of the triumph of fighting social injustice, but also open the first gate for African American and minority to strive for more political power in order to create a “great society.”

The 15th Amendment (Amendment XV), which gave African-American men the right to vote, was inserted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment says, “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.” Although the amendment was passed in the late 1870s, many racist practices were used to oppose African-Americans from voting, especially in the Southern States like Georgia and Alabama. After many years of racism, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overthrow legal barricades at the state and local levels that deny African-Americans their right to vote. In the

The Voting Rights Act was passed into law on August 6, 1965. The law prohibited the use of poll taxes and literacy tests that prevented Southern Blacks from voting. It also gave the federal government authority to supervise how poll taxes are conducted within places with disfranchised African Americans. After the Civil War, regardless of the 15th amendment, which banned the states from denying the right to vote of male citizens based on their race or previous condition of servitude before the war, discrimination was still around, prevented African Americans from voting. Many voting rights activists were also being mistreated violently.

Primary Source Analysis- During the time of reconstruction, which was after the civil war, the government passed the 13, 14, and 15th amendment to give African Americas freedom and rights. The 15th amendment gave the former African American slaves the right to vote. Between 1890 and 1906, the "new" south wanted to eliminate this right for the African Americans. Any African American who fought for their rights would be faced with violence known as lynching, murdering of three or more people.

The fifteen amendment of the United States Constitution prohibit the federal and state government from denying the citizens the right to vote, based on that citizen’s race, color or previous condition of servitude. The fifteen Amendments finally gave the African American the right to vote, but also allowed them to be able to elect into public office. Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promises if the 15 amendment would not fully realized for almost a century, thought the used of poll taxes, literacy test and other means. Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African American. Current controversies over the right to vote can be divided into two types of claims.

Even if individuals could read the administrator in charge could create impossible questions for an individual to answer before being able to register. With the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the literacy test and any discriminatory voting, practices were outlawed as prerequisites of voting. The 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced this amendment. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.

Eventually, the law dropped and African-Americans are able to use their free person rights to vote.

During that time, African Americans were not entirely free with all of their desired rights, as they still did not have complete political, economic, and social rights. Back then, African Americans did not have wholesome political rights. According to document A which shows the voting and jury rights of blacks in the north of 1860, only a few states, the New England states, had rights to suffrage. And this was only the male population of the New England region. And of that region, only one state, Massachusetts had jury rights, and that was only gained in 1860.

The voting act was an act that supported that african americans have the right to vote like any white man. Another tactic used was the idea of Black Nationalism. African Americans united together was under Malcolm X and islam. Malcolm X gave African Americans a idea of black nationalism and that they are good and better than white people. Also SNCC, which used to have white members purged them all so that the African Americans can do things themselves without the help of any white men.