Existing comment:
The Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited states from using race or previous condition of servitude as a basis for disfranchisement. It gave the Supreme Court a basis in which to hold state-sanctioned electoral devices that indirectly impeded the right of blacks to vote in violation of the constitution. One such device was the "grandfather clause," a state law that declared a voter did not have to meet qualifications to vote, such as a literacy test, provided he was descended from a voter who could vote on January 1, 1867, a limitation that systematically excluded blacks. This lithograph features Hiram Revels (R-MS), who during Reconstruction was the first American of African descent to serve as a senator in the U.S. Congress in 1870 and 1871. |