The 15th and 19th

What children learn in Level 82

• At first, the Constitution let each state decide who could vote. In most states, that meant white men, and often only those who owned land. Five amendments helped widen that circle.
• You met the 15th Amendment in Grade 4. Ratified in 1870, after the Civil War, it says a citizen's right to vote can't be denied because of race. Since women still couldn't vote, it opened the vote to Black men.
• But promises can be broken. Poll taxes, reading tests, and threats kept most southern Black citizens from voting for almost a hundred years, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave the 15th real power.
• Women fought for suffrage, the right to vote, for more than 70 years. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, and many others marched, spoke out, and went to jail.
• In 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. That was three-fourths of the 48 states then. The right to vote could no longer be denied because of sex.
• Georgia was the first state to reject it, in 1919, and didn't ratify it until 1970. And even after 1920, many Black women in the South were still kept from voting. The work wasn't done.