Background of the 15th Amendment The 15th Amendment was the last of the “Reconstruction Amendments" to be adopted. It was designed to prohibit discrimination against voters on the basis on race or previous condition of servitude. read more
In the late 1870s, the Southern Republican Party vanished with the end of Reconstruction, and Southern state governments effectively nullified both the 14th Amendment (passed in 1868, it guaranteed citizenship and all its privileges to African Americans) and the 15th amendment, stripping blacks in the South of the right to vote. read more
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". read more