February 3 In History: Black US Citizens Get Voting Right Due To The 15th Amendment To The Constitution

Ilustrasi (Unsplash / Sushil Nash)

JAKARTA - The 15th amendment to the United States (US) constitution which took place today, February 3, more than a century ago or in 1870, carries important meaning for blacks. This is a new milestone in the erosion of racist behavior in the US because US citizens of African descent get the right to vote.

However, discriminatory practices have not completely disappeared from the face of Uncle Sam country. The right to vote for blacks does not apply in the south US. This discriminatory act only disappeared after the 1965 Right to Vote Law was passed.

This discriminatory problem can be traced three years before the 15th amendment to the US constitution was held. After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the Republican-dominated US Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act over President Andrew Johnson's veto.

The regulation divides the South into five military districts. In addition, the regulation also outlines that the establishment of a new government based on universal suffrage will be established.

Quoted from History, Wednesday, February 3, 2021, with the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, the politically mobilized African-American community joined forces with white allies in Southern states electing the Republican Party to power. This brought a radical change throughout the South.

By the end of 1870, all the former Confederate nations had been accepted back into the Union. It is largely controlled by the Republican Party thanks to the support of black voters.

That same year, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, became the first African-American to sit in the US Congress as a senate. Although black Republicans never held political positions comparable to the electoral majority, Revels and other black men successfully served in Congress during the Reconstruction era.

In the late 1870s, Republicans in the south of the US disappeared with the end of the Reconstruction era. Southern state governments canceled the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing privileges for African-Americans. It stripped black South people of their right to vote.

In the following decades, discriminatory treatment became more intense. A variety of discriminatory practices including ballot taxes and literacy tests are used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote.

The 1965 Act

The Right to Vote Act 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, aims to overcome all legal barriers at the state and local levels. The law helps African Americans who cannot vote despite the 15th Amendment.

The law prohibits the use of literacy tests, which provide federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population has not registered to vote. The law empowers the US attorney general to investigate the use of ballot taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made election taxes illegal in federal elections; poll tax in state elections was also outlawed in 1966 by the US Supreme Court.

After the passage of the Right to Vote Act, state and local law enforcement was weak and often neglected, especially in the South and in areas where a high proportion of the black population and their votes threaten the political status quo. The Right to Vote Act 1965 provided African-American voters with the legal means to challenge much better restrictions on voting and voter participation.