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15 Amendment Research Paper

563 Words3 Pages

The 15th Amendment (Amendment XV), which gave African-American men the right to vote, was inserted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment says, “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.” Although the amendment was passed in the late 1870s, many racist practices were used to oppose African-Americans from voting, especially in the Southern States like Georgia and Alabama. After many years of racism, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overthrow legal barricades at the state and local levels that deny African-Americans their right to vote. In the …show more content…

White people were getting worried that African-Americans would overthrow the government because of their rapid growth in population. Soon after, the Alabama government dictated that only the votes of white people would count. After that happened many African-Americans rioted against the government and white owned businesses. When that happened a man named Professor Gomillion filed suit against the mayor and other high officials saying it was against the 14th Amendment. When the suit reached Judge Frank Johnson he dismissed the case saying the state had the rights to draw a boundary of what he could accept, but after he dismissed the case it had reached the Court of Appeals and the ruling was upheld. Booker T. Washington, the head of Tuskegee, helped to advance education and self-improvement for blacks, saying that whites needed to accept that black people were deserving of voting rights. Gomillion and his attorneys appealed to the U.S Supreme Court. The case was argued by Alabama Civil Rights attorney Fred Grey. This was a landmark case, The Supreme Court ruled this was against the 14th and 15th amendment. Martin Luther King Jr. also influenced this case when he marched in Alabama, getting many whites and African Americans on his side helping the final decision of the

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