The Fifteenth Amendment

The Fifteenth Amendment provides that the right of citizens 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, and gives Congress power to enforce it. Ratified on February 3, 1870, it was the last of the three Reconstruction amendments. Hundreds of thousands of Black men voted in the years that followed, and more than a dozen Black men were elected to Congress during Reconstruction.

The promise was soon undercut. After federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877, states adopted poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, grandfather clauses, and outright violence to keep Black citizens from voting, and by 1900 Black voter registration in much of the South had collapsed. Courts struck down some devices, such as grandfather clauses in 1915 and white primaries in 1944, but meaningful enforcement came only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, passed under Congress's enforcement power after the march at Selma.

The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests, required certain states to obtain federal approval before changing voting rules, and in Section 2 prohibits practices with discriminatory results. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the formula used to decide which jurisdictions needed preclearance, effectively ending it. Section 2 challenges to redistricting continue, and the Court reheard a major case on how race may be considered in drawing districts in its 2025 term. Supporters of strong enforcement say discrimination persists, while critics argue race-based remedies are no longer justified.