Voting Rights

 
African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The term African American generally denotes descendants of enslaved black people who are from the United States, while some recent black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African American or may identify differently.   Black suffrage refers to black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of black minorities.
Most black men in the United States did not gain the right to vote until after the American Civil War. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified to prohibit states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude."  

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868) subsequently granted African Americans the rights of citizenship. Sadly, this did not always translate into the right to vote. Even after Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment providing the right to vote, it would be many years before African Americans would be allowed to fully participate in the process.