What did the 15 amendment provide?

Answer 1

A better way to put this question is in a more academic form and view. Afterall, we do love education. WHAT DID THE 15TH AMENDMENT TO THE U.S.CONSTITUTION GUARANTEE "AMERICAN CITIZENS" WHO HAD BEEN "DISENFRANCHISED" SINCE THE BIRTH OF THE COUNTRY? That's the answer to the question: "What did the 15th amendment guarantee blacks?" The 15th Amendment simply says (look it up): that all "citizens" have the right to vote no matter what their background has been, "even if" their background has been in slavery. The 15th Amendment was not written and enacted just for people with a dark skin color. The 15th Admendment is not a racist amendment; it is American fundamentalism. The 15th was written for the past and for the present and for the future. It says all, "all citizens"... so that means: men, women and children (but children do not vote) so that means men: all men, and women: all women. ALL women had been disenfranchised since the birth of the country, including white women. They did not have the right to vote and so they had to do just like every body else to get the right to vote. They had to struggle to get it. And, the words "even if" insures the point of the amendment to mean an inclusion of every one in every condition who is a citizen of America 'even if' they have been in servitude and/or enslaved. The intent is clear and was suppose to be the end of the matter. Americans were suppose to be in a brand new world with a brand new "equalized" reality. But, that's not how it went. American sentimentality did not align with the 15th Amendment. Now, some people will want to argue fine points and details and say: "But blacks were not citizens. Blacks were not even persons and individuals. Blacks were considered as farm chattel like horses and cattle, ducks and geese." The intelligent mind understands that this is all wrong: people are not cows and geese, but the sentimentality in the country at the time had people viewing the darker hues as unequal (sociopolitically) to white people and more equal to the status and value of cows and geese even though many of these people were procreating children together. The spiritual sense of it was to disenfranchise people with African heritage and not acknowledge them as equal to people with European heritage. But, if "citizenship" is gained by "birth to the soil" then the amendment was trying to say so. The fact that the enslaved people were 'born to the soil' citizens should have eliminated that argument but it didn't. Some people didn't want to move on to another view and most Americans didn't want to push the point at that time for fear of yet another war. Over 600,000 people had already died in the Civil War. The People Held in Bondage were American citizens even if America disowned them and disenfranchised them. This is the truest scholarship. It was not enough to propose "spiritual intelligence" that would set things right and true...even as early as 1870 with the 15th Amendment. (The Emancipation Proclaimation was enacted and realized between 1863-1865) so the 15th was proposed just five years after manumission. The people in America at that time had to be ready to change and they were not. It takes more than good spiritual intelligence to make a great society. It takes a change in the people's worldview. The people have to make changes in their stream of consciousness. They have to see and accept a new reality. The American populace in 1870 was not ready to change their stream of consciousness to what the 15TH Amendment proposed. After centuries of forced and enforced bondage and enslavement, some people in America were trying to make it right and establish the fundamentals of freedom and equality but that didn't mean WE, The People were ready to move on to something right and true. It was very risky business to propose this new reality for America...it was actually life threathening! Another century passed and it was into the 1960s that another attempt was launched with the Civil Rights Movement to try and align American sentimentality with the basic fundamentals proposed in the U. S. Constitution. Today, in a new century, after the Civil Rights Movement, there is a man with some skin color and African heritage running for President and we're still not ready. Today, we have had a woman running for President and another woman is running for Vice-President but we still view them as "women" first, as the gender with an oppressed background sociopolitically and therefore economically. We still have issues with "race" and "gender." These are American shortcomings that block equality for all citizens. Some people saw the right vision all along. The 15th Amendment proves it. It is exemplary for this amendment to be historically right and timely. Civilized people should "right" very bad "wrongs" in their constitutional essentials. WE, The People will one day be very proud of the 15TH AMENDMENT because it was so timely so soon after emancipation. The new idea and the new concept had to get by the minds and worldviews of the people. Some of them with common thought, some of them with noble and religious thought, some of them with political thought and some of them with a fierce sociopolitical agenda but some were just plain ignorant of the fact that the entire purpose of a Constitution was/is to create a great society for us all to live in...freely! So, the people had to approach this new idea from all camps even though the 15th Amendment was simply worded for all "races" and all "conditions', even servitude, but this did not set well with "white" women during these times. They wanted other considerations; they wanted considerations not in line with former enslaved people. So, "women" (as they are referred to in history) came together as a political camp against the amendment and move to have their position accepted under different circumstances. A few years later "white" women got the right to vote and the so-called "black" people, and other "colors" of people (there is only one color for humans but there are differing shades and variations) had another leg to run in the race for their inclusion as citizens and it would take another century. It is still ongoing. People who are not white are called 'minorities' meaning 'unequal' citizens. (BE REMINDED NOW: just because ALL the people have rights on paper (and that paper be the Constitution of the U.S.) does not mean it can become a reality immediately. The mind of the public at-large has to grasp it and greet it as reality.) ----

The Fifteenth Amendment was stated in popular terms as the :"RACE NO BAR TO VOTE" amendment. Well, "white" was perceived as a "race" of people. Today, we perceive 'white' as an ethnicity, not a race. That means, NO RACE IS BARRED FROM VOTING: not white, not black, not brown, not yellow, not red -- no 'race', no skin-color, is barred from voting and that includes white people but then "women" were not allowed to vote. The amendment does not mention 'gender' specifically. White women did not want to be aligned with those in servitude or with those who had been enslaved; they wanted to be ''equalized'' with the white man but it still didn't happen. She got the right to vote but even today there is no one "equal" (sociopolitically and economically) with the white man but the white man. WE, The People are still trying to get the vision right. Perhaps change will come: 143 years after legalized enslavement and disenfranchisement of 'women' and 'races.' Historically, the white woman was disenfranchised too. She was not cited as a "slave" in American history but some writers are beginning to refer to her as "property" even as "chattel" because of how she was treated. Her life could be snuffed out at any moment too. Thus, white women created a very passionate view based on very passionate feelings to try and set in a new reality for her. She was giving birth to people who ended up treating her less and certainly not like a citizen. Boys were raised and conditioned to feel superior to their mothers who could not own property, had no civil rights, could not leave a bad marriage without severe consequences and could not vote nor think politically. So, the white woman took the position: I GIVE BIRTH TO YOU: I am your wife, your mother and grandmother, your sister, your aunts and cousins: Do you dare give the right of way to others before me? The Women's Suffrage Movement was on. At first, white women adjoined their movement with Frederick Douglass and others because they understood that they all had a common adversary: the dominate white male. Then, the politics of the white male spurned a split between them and the white woman went for the emotional jugular and put her argument on a very intimate basis. It worked! Afterall, she was his wife, his mother and grandmother, et cetera. Sojourner Truth, the great African American suffragist tore open her bodice in a meeting between the two camps and said, "Ain't I a woman too?" That spot in history is referred to as the African American Woman's Suffrage cliché. So, the populace took the 15TH amendment as an amendment for "blacks"--no, no, (using the word 'black" as a political identity did not come until the 1960s); the words for that period were "coloreds", meaning the people came in a medley of skin colors, (since some of everybody was having sex with some of everybody). Academically, the word is, rather the forced identity was: 'Negro', which later becomes "blacks", by choice, which later became "African-Americans", also by choice based on current academics. But then, when the white populace read the 15th amendment they saw the words "color" and "condition of servitude" and assumed it was for 'Negroes' only. This is how the amendment came to mean: "black men got the vote first before white women" but this is not academically true even if it seemed true to the populace. People will believe what they want to believe but the 15TH says, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged..."; white women were citizens of the U.S. at the time so they gained the right to vote under the 15TH. One can clearly see that the 15th does not say "black men" but the populace inferred it was for "men" only because women did not have the right to vote and were not likely to get it soon and the word ''servitude'' was/is automatically referred to black people. What is even more befuddling about this, speaking of WE, The People: The Supreme Court hears a case on the subject of the women's suffrage movement and declares that just because you are a citizen of the U.S. does mean your suffrage is over and gained. ["In Minor v. Hapersett (1875) the Court ruled that citizenship did not in itself confer suffrage rights."] Well then: what else is 'citizenship?' But then, the Supreme Court registers just as befuddlingly during the time of the great arguments by Quincy Adams against enslavement in a "free" country. Nine of the seated justices owned people, held them in bondage and forced enslavement upon them. THEREFORE, citizens can expect some befuddleness to come out of the Supreme Court. (And don't forget, our highly regarded Jefferson admitted that he had to continue his ill-begotten gains from human bondage and enslavement, humans as property, because otherwise his image would be that of a pauper, a poor man, and not that of a nobleman and a statesman. We can think of Abe Lincoln too at this moment and realize that he never set-out directly to free anybody from bondage: his most immediate concern was the State of the Union and the fact that America stood vulnerable to attack from all sides. I agree with Lincoln's most emergent agenda. He later created the Emancipation Proclamation because he needed people to fight on the side of the Union. So, he ordered some of the people freed in some places but when the flood gates opened the people ran out to freedom and some showed up to fight for the Union Army. That led to the Emancipation Proclamation. It was not that Lincoln was so much on the side of enslavement (or not). His most pressing agenda was the Union. That was good thinking. Freedom for the Americans held in bondage would have taken on a slow, gradual pace, taking centuries to gain their release but the Union Army needed soldiers and the people were ready to fight for their freedom. The released Americans helped to change reality and shift American sentimentality closer to the truest fundamentals in their constitution for a 'free' and 'equal' society. WE, The People will one day feel proud of the 15th Amendment because it is proof that just five years after centuries of slavery and disenfranchisement of women some people in high places were trying to get it right. So, history is befuddling and it will always will be befuddling because life churns on an axis from differing minds and sentimentality, from differing agendas and politics. But now, here's a final thought: Probably, the most important aspect of the epoch regarding the 15th Amendment and it is this: IF white women had played it safe and quiet, and had not challenged the 15th Amendment and moved us on to a clearer statement of Women's Rights, we would be living in a stark-wrenched patriarchy today with black men nearing equality with white men, and other men, and all women would be subjected to the proverbial lower place for women. That's very different from what we live today. It may have taken yet another century for us to get that part right and set women to equality. Our society would have been just like the other countries we love to call "primitive." Our society would not be working hard trying to spin fundamentals for 'freedom' and 'equality' on an American axis. --Margaret Opine

Answer 2

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United states from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (i.e., slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870.

The Fifteenth Amendment is one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Answer 3

it guaranteed the African American men the right to vote

Answer 4

It gave African Americans men the right to vote.

Answer 5

A way to make African Americans citizens