Jesse Gordon. "How did African Americans win the right to vote?". On the issues.org. 9 August 2000. 6 Sep 2008
In the time period of 1870-1965 many African-Americans weren't able to vote. In 1789 African-Americans were considered in the constitution as three-fifths of a person and could not vote at all. Soon after the Civil War, in 1865, the "3/5Th's clause" was repealed, which gave African-Americans full voting rights. Nine score years after that, most white Democrats did all kinds of things that would stop African-Americans from exercising their 15Th amendment. For example, they came up with the famous "Literacy Test", which was very unfair to the black community because most of the African-Americans from the 17Th and 18Th century couldn't read or write. So if you wasn't qualified for the "Literacy Test" than you couldn't vote, unless your grandfather voted, but again, this was very uncommon for the African-American society. Another tactic the white Democrats used was "Poll Tax". If you wanted to vote you would have to pay a tax, and since most African-Americans were poor, this also interfered with them exercising their 15Th amendment. They also used violent tactics to scare Blacks away from the polling places. The Democrats soon changed this law because it just didn't pertain to African-Americans, it pertained to poor white men also. Legally speaking, the right to vote originally came with the 15Th amendment but socially speaking it took the Civil Rights movement to make it a reality for all people, not just white rich folk. Then, on August 6Th, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Since then,60% of African-Americans have taken advantage of their Constitutional Right and have voted, the other 40% have failed to realize that our ancestors worked hard for African-Americans to have this privilege and yet we still continue to be ungrateful
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