Reconstruction Amendments: The Fight Against Segregation and Voting Discrimination

⭐ The Fifteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on February 26, 1869 and ratified on February 3rd, 1870.

📅 The Reconstruction period took place from the end of the Civil War in April 1865 to the beginning of 1877.

🔑 The core of the Reconstruction period consisted of three amendments that brought significant changes to the application of laws in the South.

📜 The 15th Amendment to the Constitution grants the right to vote to all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

🗽 The 14th Amendment protected civil rights but not political rights, which led to the need for the 15th Amendment to ensure equal voting rights for African Americans.

🏛️ The Reconstruction Republicans recognized that southern states might deny African Americans the right to vote, and the 15th Amendment aimed to prevent this while also addressing their representation in Congress.

🗽 The 15th Amendment allowed freed slaves to vote, but southern states used various tactics to prevent African Americans from voting.

💰 Southern states implemented grandfather clauses and poll taxes to disenfranchise African Americans.

🤝 The Supreme Court, including Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, upheld these tactics, denying African Americans the right to vote until the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

⭐️ The Reconstruction Amendments, including the 15th Amendment, were undermined and made irrelevant within ten years of passage.

⚖️ During the rise of Jim Crow, the Supreme Court upheld segregation and struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

🔁 Southern states consistently denied the promise of Reconstruction and the Amendments, while the Supreme Court consistently sided with the South.

💡 The Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1890 allowed railroad segregation, claiming it was consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.

💡 Justice Harlan dissented, stating that the Constitution is colorblind and does not tolerate classes among citizens.

💡 The Supreme Court overturned Plessy in 1954, recognizing segregation as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

📚 Baseball integration and changing public opinion about segregation.

👥 Court striking down school segregation and national opposition to segregation.

🚂 The concept of separate but equal and its repudiation by Brown v. Board of Education.

📚 The Reconstruction Amendments were passed between 1865 and 1870.

🗳️ The 15th Amendment came into full force with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

✊ The civil rights movement played a vital role in making these rights a reality.