Black people in the United States gained the right to vote in different stages:
- The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, granted African American men the right to vote by prohibiting states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This gave Black men theoretical suffrage after the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments.
- However, despite the 15th Amendment, many Southern states enacted laws such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses, as well as intimidation and outright violence, to disenfranchise Black voters effectively denying them voting rights for many decades.
- Black women gained the legal right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but they too faced significant obstacles to voting through racial discrimination and intimidation.
- It wasn't until the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, that racial discriminatory practices in voting—like literacy tests—were banned nationwide, effectively securing the voting rights of Black people and ensuring more equal access to the ballot box.
In summary, while legally Black men had the right to vote from 1870 and Black women from 1920, true and practical voting rights for Black people in the U.S. were only fully protected with the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Until then, many were systematically prevented from voting by discriminatory state laws and practices.
