On This Day in History March 30

On this day in history in 1870, The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is formally adopted.  The Amendment prohibits states and the federal government from denying a person (man) the right to vote based on his race, color or previous status as a slave.  The following day, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African-American to vote under the protection of the Fifteenth Amendment.

In 1867, despite President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the Republican dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, which divided the South into five districts and outlining how the governments of the districts would be established.   Following the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, which is the third Reconstruction Amendment, empowered African-American communities joined forces with white allies in the Southern states and elected the Republican Party to power.  By the end of 1870, all of the former Confederate states were re-admitted to the Union.  Most were controlled by the Republican office, due to the support of the African-American voters.

Also,  in 1870, Hiram Rhoades Revels, an African-American Republican from Mississippi, became the first African-American to sit in Congress.  Following in Revels’ footsteps were a dozen other African American men who held seats in Congress, and more than 600 sat in state legislatures.

As Reconstruction vanished in the late 1870’s so did the Southern Republican Party.   State governments nullified the Fifteen Amendment, taking away the right of African-Americans to vote.  It would be almost one hundred years before the nation would again work to give all citizens in the South the right to vote.