How did African-Americans win the right to vote?
JesseGordon gave this response on 8/9/2000: Well, that requires a survey of most of the history of the United States. So I’ll outline it and you can ask a follow-up about the parts you’re interested in. In 1789, African-Americans were defined in the Constitution as 3/5 of a person for counting representation, and could not vote at all. (Constitution’s Article 1, section 2, and elsewhere) In 1865, following the Civil War, African-Americans were given the right to vote and the “3/5ths clause” was rescinded. (14th and 15th Amendment). The clause relevant to your question is the 15th Amendment, article 1: “The right… to vote shall not be denied or abridged… on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” (the “previous condition of servitude” meant that states couldn’t deny the right to vote to those who had been slaves). For 90 years thereafter, states did all sorts of things to abridge the right to vote for African-Americans. The main means were seemingly “objective”
