Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, forbids the federal and state governments to deny a citizen the right to vote because of 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude'. The last of the three Reconstruction amendments, it enfranchised Black men across the country. From the 1890s Southern states evaded it with poll taxes, literacy tests and violence, and its promise was largely realised only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.