Talk:Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution/Archive 1

Reverted
Sorry&mdash;I reverted because I didn't understand the addition of the Italian and the erasure of half of the article. I hope this doesn't offend anyone terribly. Best, Hydriotaphia 02:15, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Politically Speaking
Why is republican party always saddled with the racist label, when they are the ones that freed the slaves, gave them the right to vote, and assisted in just about everything pertaining to equal treatment? Democrats ("the Party of the African-Americans") as a whole were pro-slavery, blockaded the 15th Amendment, and in the South effectively stopped blacks from voting until 1965.

I get extremely frustrated when the facts are summarily smudged and rewritten to fit the politicians agenda! AND NO ONE STOPS THEM!! If you believe the republicans to be racist NOW, then just say so. Do not LIE about the senators of the past. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.202.97.170 (talk &bull; contribs) 03:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC).
 * Nothing in this article describes Republicans as racist, so what is the point of your comment? This talk page is for discussing the article, not a forum for expressing your opinion on tangentially related subjects. --  Mateo SA | talk 03:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * It's cute that you're trying to equate the republicans of the past with the republicans of the here and now. They are hardly one and the same. Conservatives are considered to be republicans in the here and now, while most of the people you're referring to, including Abraham Lincoln were much more liberal on the social aspect of the political spectrum. And were I to take your argument solely as you've presented it, lets not forget LBJ was a democrat. He worked as majority leader to pass the Civil Rights act of 1965. Admittedly Ike was a republican, but he's definitely the last of a dying breed. The biggest problem with your statement, as well as mine, is that there is a huge amount of blurring between what is considered to be a democrat now and what is considered to be a democrat then, and the same goes for republicans. 67.164.68.182 (talk) 08:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Gender It's important to stress that 1870 only the male citizens became the right to vote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.138.120 (talk) 14:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

How did the Fifteenth Amendment become ratified?
This article has no information about how the Fifteenth Amendment became ratified. Which states approved this amendment? Which ones didn't? What impact politically, did the effort to ratify this amendment have in the various states? Did any Southern states approve this amendment? Why did Tennessee approve this amendment a century later in 1997? Kaldari 16:57, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Weird edit button locations
I was just looking at the article, and the edit links for the first three sections all appear next to each other, halfway down the third section. I have no idea what might be causing this. Could someone correct it? OldMiner 00:59, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Your guess is as good as mine. I'll get a bug report in and hopefully someone will get to it in the near future. Kennard2 03:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I also noticed this, too. Any thoughts? --Sean Quinn (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Where's The Case Law?
There have been many Supreme Court decisions regarding this amendment. Those decisions would help explain how the amendment has been applied through the years. For now, read Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495 (2000). That decision discusses many of the decisions that should be in this article. SMP0328. (talk) 02:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be an error
I'm not sure, but this portion of the page seems to be backwards:


 * 1) New Jersey (February 15, 1871, after having rejected it on February 7, 1870)
 * 2) Delaware (February 12, 1901, after having rejected it on March 18, 1869)
 * 3) Oregon (February 24, 1959)
 * 4) California (April 3, 1962, after having rejected it on January 28, 1870)
 * 5) Maryland (May 7, 1973, after having rejected it on February 26, 1870)
 * 6) Kentucky (March 18, 1976, after having rejected it on March 12, 1869)
 * 7) Tennessee (April 2, 1997, after having rejected it on November 16, 1869)

24.123.3.106 (talk) 21:56, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There's no error. In each item, except for one, is the date of ratification followed the date that State had originally rejected the Fifteenth Amendment. The order is based on the ratification dates, which is correct. SMP0328. (talk) 01:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

There is another error, please check on this, it looks like an error to me in the article. Shouldn't it read from 1965 to 1980? "It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, almost a century later, that the full promise of the Fifteenth Amendment was actually achieved in all states. After the passage on a per capita and absolute basis, more blacks were elected to political office during the period from 1865 to 1880 than at any other time in American history." Thanks 1skyquestion (talk) 00:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * "1865 to 1880" is correct. The sentence about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was original research and so has been removed. Thanks for helping with this and welcome to Wikipedia. SMP0328. (talk) 01:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Reversion of David
Much of the history in this article is erroneous. Intimidating of black voters did not begin after Hayes was elected in 1876. It was rampant in Alabama in 1874 and Mississippi in 1875, when grant "traded Mississippi for Ohio." Furthermore, federal enforcement efforts were weak throughout reconstruction, indeed more money was spent enforcing the 15th amendment in democratic areas of New York than in the entire South. Why were my properly sourced edited labeled vandalism>?????

I tried to edit the history portion (section two) on 9/16/09, but my edits were undone and I was accused of vandalizing the page. All my referenced were sourced and I have no idea why I was accused of vandalism. Would someone please explain this to me. 76.17.43.14 (talk) 02:19, 17 September 2009 (UTC)David


 * What you added seems to be a fringe theory. Do you have a source which can be view on-line? SMP0328. (talk) 03:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The text of the reconstruction acts, which enfranchised southern blacks before the 15th amendment, is available online. 39 Cong. Ch. 153; 14 Stat. 428), (40 Cong. Ch. 6; 15 Stat. 2). There are links to them in Wikipedia. Thus, the "purpose" of enfranchising Southern blacks had already been achieved. The 15th amendment gave constitutional protection to this fact and prevented a future, possibly democratic congress, from disenfranchising southern blacks.

Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (1988) was written by a Columbia University Professor, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and should be available at any good library. Gillette's book is out of print, (he was a professor at Rutgers), but can be bought on Amazon for a few dollars. Foner agrees with Gillette's main conclusions, but is not as in-depth. There is a helpful table in Gillette that I will summarize here, rounding to the nearest hundred:

State    Number of Potential Black Voters        Margin in 1868 Election Maryland 28,500                                  31,900 Democrat Missouri 23,700                                  25,800 Republican Penn.     9,400                                  28,900 R NY         8,200                                  10,000 D NJ         4,200                                  2,900  D DE         3,600                                  3,300  D

The point is that Mid-Atlantic and Mid-Western elections were very close and the potential black vote, which was reliably republican, was the decisive reason that the republican party rammed the 15th amendment through over popular opposition. Referenda to enfranchise blacks had been voted down in OH, NY and KS in the 3 years before the 15th amendment passed congress. Roman24 (talk) 12:24, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Other Factual Errors
No State gave blacks the right to vote at the time the constitution was framed. In fact, every state had slavery at that time other than Pennsylvania.

The statement that the 15th amendment was intended primarily to enfranchise former slaves is also erroneous. As I explained above, blacks in the south were enfranchised in 1867 by the Reconstruction Acts, leaving only Border State and Northern blacks disenfranchised. Roman24 (talk) 19:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Going for Good Article status
I suspect that most people watching here have been watching the ongoing work at 13th and 14th amendments as well, but I wanted to post a courtesy note here that in the coming weeks I'll be trying to bring this up to Good Article status. I wanted to start by asking long-time watchers of this article: What do you think most needs to be done here? Obviously there's a lot of cleanup tags that need to be addressed--I imagine I'll start off with those. A section on later judicial interpretation also seems likely to be helpful. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:44, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The most glaring thing for me about this article, particularly because redirects here, is that it doesn't fully address the implementation of Black suffrage in the US. In some places, such as Mississippi, it took 100 years or more to actually implement. Voting rights in the United States and Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era address this history to some degree... but, actually, even these articles do not really discuss (let alone provide statistics about) the progress of Black voting rights after 1965. groupuscule (talk) 23:42, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that's a good suggestion--definitely one I intend to address in revisions. My first impression is that this is much weaker than our starting points at the 13A and 14A articles. The history section is somewhat disordered and would benefit from being broken into subsections; the material is undersourced, or reliant on primary sources; and on a smaller point, the images could be better distributed in the article. I'm tentatively thinking of expanding this one into a structure along the lines of
 * 1. Text
 * 2. Adoption
 * a. Background
 * b. Proposal
 * c. Ratification
 * 3. Implementation
 * 4. Judicial Interpretation
 * I've started a draft expansion in my user space, and will post a link here when it's in sensible enough shape to be worth the time of others to look at. If I'm smart enough to make one, I might also attempt a ratification map such as those found in the relevant sections of 13A and 14A. -- Khazar2 (talk) 23:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Expansion draft created
All right, I've created an expanded and revised version of this article. IMHO, this one was a serious mess, so I've made more extensive changes here than at the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendment articles.

Major changes:
 * expanded lead to properly summarize article per WP:LEAD
 * reduced reliance on primary sources/original research
 * removed some obviously unreliable sources
 * added reliable secondary sources on history and judicial interpretation
 * expanded sections on background, the ratification struggle, and later judicial interpretation
 * addressed or removed disputed text marked with clean-up tags
 * rearranged images to avoid bunching them in one spot
 * moved lengthy detail of ratification dates by state to footnotes
 * removed a paragraph of discussion about debate over the amendment in Oregon--seemed a bit of an aside.
 * removed ungrammatical paragraph about black officeholders without explicit connection to 15th Amendment--something about this background should probably be added, but I'd prefer a source that connects it directly to the article's subject. I also can't fully clean up this paragraph without access to its source, which I don't have.

Since this seems to me a clear improvement, I've boldly moved this new draft into article space, but if anyone feels strongly that the current version is better, feel free to restore the parts of the previous text you preferred or revert wholly, and we can work through the above point-by-point. Thanks to everybody watching this one, and I'll look forward to your feedback/edits/further expansions/etc. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I've now put the article up for GA, but of course will be happy to keep working on any revisions anyone might propose. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Great improvements to the article! Thanks for taking the time to improve this. I just made a few changes myself, mostly in the heading names (replacing compound headings) and in trying to make more transitions for a smoother flower between paragraphs in the "Application" section (the former "Implementation and interpretation" section, renamed for I figure the term is sufficiently broad to encompass both enforcement and interpretation). There was a paragraph concerning poll taxes that I rearranged such that the poll tax information is less emphasized (given that it isn't directly related to the 15th Amendment). Also, another editor added information about Shelby v. Holder, and I noticed that the VRA was only briefly mentioned in the article, I made some edits to reflect the relationship between the VRA and the Fifteenth Amendment and to provide a few more details on the VRA. I'll also go through and add some more sources over the next day or two. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 05:17, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts. I'll also be adding material in a day or two. SMP0328. (talk) 05:28, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
 * And thanks to you both--I think your additions look good, Prototime. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:48, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Rice v. Cayetano
This case made clear that the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the use of ancestry as a voting requirement. The Court ruled that the use of ancestry in that case was a proxy for race. I feel this case should be in the article, but where do you think is the best place in the article for this case to be mentioned? SMP0328. (talk) 21:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have strong feelings about it, but I suppose it's best that we stick with chronological order for now. It does disrupt the narrative of the history of black voting a bit, but without other cases, this would feel very oddly tacked on as the only case not in chrono order. I'll put it in in a moment and you can see what you think. -- Khazar2 (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, it seems to pair well with Gomillion; then poll tax stuff can stay together in one para and flow into Shelby. Does that make sense to you? -- Khazar2 (talk) 23:21, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent job. I wanted Rice v. Cayetano in the article so it could show the Fifteenth Amendment being applied outside of the context people normally think of it being applied. Linking it with Gomillion was perfect. As for chronological ordering, that should the default. Sometimes, it's a good idea to do otherwise. SMP0328. (talk) 01:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Content from 40th United States Congress article
A portion of the following content was removed from article 40th United States Congress on 00:19, 6 July 2014‎. Specifically, the portion after, "... passed Congress ..." It was inappropriate for that article, but not in this article.

"February 26, 1869: Fifteenth Amendment passed Congress with a Senate vote of 39 Republican votes of "Yea", 8 Democrat & 5 Republican votes of "Nay" with 13 Republican & 1 Democrat not voting. The House of Representatives passed on 143 Republican & 1 Conservative Republican votes of "Yea", 39 Democrat, 3 Republican, 1 Independent Republican & 1 Conservative votes of "Nay" with 26 Republican, 8 Democrat & 1 Independent Republican not voting and then sent to the states for ratification." Mitchumch (talk) 00:15, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe this material is for the most party, if not completely, already in the article. SMP0328. (talk) 01:16, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I added the content from 40th United States Congress article, reworded the sentences and added also the necessary sources. This issued should be therefore resolved. --P3Y229 (talk • contribs) 12:17, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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