The Journey To The Polls

The path to full voting rights for all American citizens was long and often challenging. The franchise was first extended to African Americans under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, passed during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. These amendments provided that all male citizens, regardless of their race, must receive equal treatment under the law and not be deprived of their rights without due process. The Fifteenth Amendment is specifically dedicated to protecting the right of all citizens to vote, regardless of race.

For practical purposes, this was not the end of the voting rights struggle for African Americans. Because of widespread discrimination in many states, including the use of poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests, and other more violent means, African Americans were not assured basic voting rights until President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Women were denied the right to vote until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Prior to that, women had only been able to vote in select States.

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.

The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

This information is important because it shows how we are still fighting for the right to place our vote. We are seeing that certain minorities are still being targeted to either taken away our rights or make them harder to keep. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD THIS ELECTION SEASON

LIKE YOUR RIGHTS DEPEND ON THEM.