Amendment XV

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.

My Opinion: This amendment was the last of the Reconstruction Amendments. By having this amendment put in place, it ended many struggles for slaves. This is just another Amendment that shows how America is growing and granting freedom to "almost" everyone.

Tennessee becomes last state to ratify the 15th Amendment

Just after the Civil War, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed that no one could be denied the right to vote because of their "race, color or previous condition of servitude."

Today, 127 years later, Tennessee recently became the last state to formally agree with the amendment.

The state's House of Representatives and the Senate voted to make amends by unanimously approving a resolution that ceremoniously ratified what has been the law of the land since 1870.

The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Tommie Brown of Chattanooga, who learned in September from constitutional scholar Gregory Watson of Austin, TX, that Tennessee had never post-ratified the amendment.

The 15th amendment was submitted to the states for ratification after it was approved by the 40th U.S. Congress in February 1869. Three-quarters of the 37 states in existence at the time approved it; the bill was ratified in March 1870.

Sen. Keith Jordan of Franklin reminded his colleagues that because Tennessee was the first state to rejoin the Union after the Civil War, it was not required to ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments as were other Southern states.

Many states post-ratified the amendment later, including Delaware in 1901; Oregon in 1959; California in 1962; Maryland in 1973 and Kentucky in 1976.

My Opinion: This article came as a little shocking to me after I read it. I did not know that the some southern states were not required to ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. This seems a little weird to me that after so long, this is just now being ratified. Of course they followed the Constitution but never legally ratified the 15th Amendment. It then makes you wonder what other things happened during this era that people don't know about.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Speech on Voting Rights

My Opinion: By President Lyndon B. Johnson making this significant statement was life changing for millions of people. This is the end to man's endless search for freedom as he refers to it. It just makes you think about all the activists such as MLK who worked so hard for this moment and now it has finally came true. By the president of the United States to say that it is disgraceful for not every American to have the right to vote says a lot about our country and shows that we are willing to grow.