#OnThisDay in 1870, the 15th Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote, was ratified. Unfortunately, Southern states continued to disenfranchise black voters through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, threats of physical harm, etc. Therefore, the promise of the 15th Amendment was not fully realized until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965–almost a century later.
The amendment was passed (proposed) by Congress on February 26, 1869, and ratified on February 3, 1870.
Learn more:
— National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27
— LOC: http://www.loc.gov/rr//program/bib/ourdocs/15thamendment.html
— Teaching resources: https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/elections/voting-rights-african-americans.html
The “Woman Suffrage Procession” was the first suffragist parade in Washington, DC. Organized by the suffragist Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, it saw thousands of suffragists marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC on Monday, March 3, 1913. Presaging the circumstances surrounding the 2017 Women’s March just over 100 years later, the 1913 event was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” as the official program stated. While studying in England, Paul had heard the British suffragist Christabel Pankhurst speak and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, being jailed a number of times in the process. She returned to the US in 1910 and continued to campaign for women’s rights leading to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
A high energy community gathering to remember, honor and celebrate the bold, courageous and powerful women who gathered in our nation’s capital for the National Women’s Suffrage Parade in 1913 to celebrate the right to vote and to promote the benefits of advocacy.
Corpus Christi League of Womens Voters website
