Somberly I undertake the writing of this article. It’s a report on the many veterans of WWI and WWII who faced persecutions and lynching while in service, and in uniform,
How Jim Crow-Era Laws Suppressed the African American Vote for Generations
In the wake of the passage of the 15th Amendment and Reconstruction, several southern states enacted laws that restricted Black Americans access to voting.
Author:
Black men voting in 1868./Credit: Corbis/Getty Images
In the wake of the passage of the 15th Amendment and Reconstruction, several southern states enacted laws that restricted Black Americans access to voting.
Following the ratification in 1870 of the 15
th Amendment, which barred states from depriving citizens the right to vote based on race, southern states began enacting measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests, all-white primaries, felony disenfranchisement laws, grandfather clauses, fraud and intimidation to keep African Americans from the polls.