Black Voting Rights During the Antebellum Period

• During the colonial period, most colonies denied black suffrage. In the years after independence, the rhetoric of freedom inspired some Northern states to abolish slavery and extend suffrage to African-Americans. The New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where African-Americans made up a small proportion of the population, allowed free African-American men to vote, although New York eventually established a property qualification. During the 19th century, states outside of New England did not include black suffrage, even for free black men, in their constitutions.
  
  

Reconstruction and Black Suffrage

• During Reconstruction, abolitionists argued that the sacrifices of the Civil War could only be made meaningful by guaranteeing rights for former slaves, including the vote. President Abraham Lincoln and President Andrew Johnson favored a lenient approach to the South, giving the right to vote back to ex-Confederates who pledged their loyalty to the Union.
  
  Black suffrage was not on Lincoln's or Johnson's agendas. Republicans in Congress overruled Johnson and began their own Reconstruction, which included black voting rights in the South. Republicans believed Southern black suffrage was the only way to guarantee African-American freedom and liberties. Southern blacks would also be likely to vote for the Republican Party.
  
  Federal troops stationed in the South made sure that African-Americans were able to exercise the franchise, and African-Americans across the South were elected to public office in the 1860s.
  
  

The Denial of Black Suffrage During the Jim Crow Era

• Although Republicans were able to secure black suffrage in Southern states under Reconstruction, many states in the West and North still denied the right to vote to African-Americans. The 15th Amendment of 1870 prohibited denying suffrage to anyone on the basis of color, race or because of being a former slave.
  
  The nation grew weary of Reconstruction during the 1870s, and Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency in 1877 in a contested election when he promised to remove all federal troops from the South. White Southerners, most of whom had regained political rights even if they had been Confederates, returned to power and came up with ways to disenfranchise black voters. Under congressional Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence to intimidate voters; when white Southern Democrats achieved political control in the 1870s, they set up poll taxes, property qualifications and, later, complicated literacy tests to deprive African-Americans of the vote.
  
  

The Civil Rights Movement and Black Suffrage

• During the Civil Rights movement, one of the goals was to overcome the restrictions that had been erected solely to make sure that African-Americans could not vote. Civil rights activitists canvassed the South, urging black Southerners to register to vote and challenge the restrictions. The murder of three civil rights activists during Freedom Summer, a drive to register Mississippi blacks in 1964, brought nationwide attention to the issue.
  
  

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax in 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 forbid the use of devices like literacy tests to deny the franchise to eligible voters and permitted the U.S. attorney general to send federal examiners to register voters in states where local officials were impeding registration. The result was a marked increased in black voter registration in the South. Black voters in more recent history have become influential in presidential elections; in 2008, U.S. presidential Democratic primary candidates--Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama--vied for the support of black voters to win the nomination.