Primary sourceDocument1870

15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights

United States Congress · 1870

The 1870 amendment granting Black men the vote, which excluded women and framed the suffrage cause Tubman championed later in life.

This amendment enfranchised Black men but not women, framing the suffrage cause Tubman championed in her later years.

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Scanned page of the 1868 joint resolution of the Fortieth Congress proposing the 15th Amendment, with Article XV text, Speaker and Vice President signature lines, and clerk and secretary attestations. — House Joint Resolution proposing the 15th Amendment, 7 December 1868 (ratified 1870). U.S. National Archives, Washington, DC.

About this source

What it is

This is the House Joint Resolution proposing the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, submitted to the states in 1868 and ratified in 1870. It is held by the U.S. National Archives. The amendment states that the right to vote cannot be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Why it matters

To former abolitionists and Radical Republicans, the amendment seemed to fulfill promises made to African Americans after the Civil War, but it granted the vote only to Black men, not to women of any race. Devices like literacy tests and grandfather clauses soon undermined it in practice. Harriet Tubman, who lived through this amendment's passage and its limits, later devoted much of her later life to the women's suffrage movement, campaigning for the right the 15th Amendment did not extend to her.