The Fifteenth Amendment

John Brown, 9 May 1800 - 2 Dec 1859 Unknown Hiram Rhoades Revels, 27 Sep 1827 - 16 Jan 1901 James Carter Beard Schuyler Colfax, 23 Mar 1823 - 13 Jan 1885 Frederick Douglass, Feb 1818 - 20 Feb 1895 Ulysses Simpson Grant, 27 Apr 1822 - 23 Jul 1885 Martin Robison Delany, 6 May 1812 - 25 Jan 1885 Abraham Lincoln, 12 Feb 1809 - 15 Apr 1865

1861

Medium: Colored lithograph on paper
Genre: Print
Museum: National Portrait Gallery, London, UK

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About

This print features a festive parade held in Baltimore in May 1870 to celebrate the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1870). It granted male citizens the right to vote, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery (1865), and the Fourteenth to guarantee citizenship to all persons born in the United States (1868), the Fifteenth removed obstacles, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, that had limited access to the ballot.