Which Amendment Expanded Voting Rights For African American Men?

Which Amendment Expanded Voting Rights For African American Men?

• A. The 15th Amendment
• B. The 19th Amendment
• C. The 26th Amendment
• D. The 24th Amendment

Answer: (A)

The main idea this question tests is which constitutional change specifically prevents race-based restrictions on voting, thereby expanding enfranchisement for African American men. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, states that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This directly targeted the legal barriers that had kept Black men from voting after emancipation, establishing a federal guarantee that their suffrage could not be blocked for those racial reasons. Of course, even with this protection, actual voting access was still challenged for many decades by other methods like discriminatory practices and new obstacles, which later laws and court decisions sought to enforce and dismantle. Other amendments in the list broadened voting rights in different ways—such as extending the vote to women, lowering the voting age, or banning poll taxes—but they do not address race-based voting disenfranchisement for African American men as this amendment does.

The main idea this question tests is which constitutional change specifically prevents race-based restrictions on voting, thereby expanding enfranchisement for African American men. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, states that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This directly targeted the legal barriers that had kept Black men from voting after emancipation, establishing a federal guarantee that their suffrage could not be blocked for those racial reasons.

Of course, even with this protection, actual voting access was still challenged for many decades by other methods like discriminatory practices and new obstacles, which later laws and court decisions sought to enforce and dismantle. Other amendments in the list broadened voting rights in different ways—such as extending the vote to women, lowering the voting age, or banning poll taxes—but they do not address race-based voting disenfranchisement for African American men as this amendment does.