The Fifteenth Amendment

The Text

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States 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.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

What It Says

Neither the federal government nor any state may deny or restrict the vote on the basis of race, color, or having been enslaved.

What It Protects Against

Racial exclusion from the franchise. The text bars the stated ground but not the mechanisms, and poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses were used for the better part of a century to reach the same result without naming race.

Protocol Media reading. Not sourced to a ratification-era document.

Problem Addressed

After the Civil War, Southern states moved to restrict Black voting through state law, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s penalty provisions had proved insufficient to prevent it.