15th Amendment ratified — vote cannot be denied by race
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on February 3, 1870, stated that the right to vote 'shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' In practice, Southern states used literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and violence to suppress Black voting for another 95 years. The constitutional right was real; the mechanism for enforcing it took until 1965. That gap — between a rule on paper and a rule in practice — is the signature failure mode of mass democracy.
Black voter registration in Mississippi was around 67 percent in 1867 during Reconstruction. By 1955 it was below 5 percent. The amendment never changed; the enforcement mechanism collapsed and had to be rebuilt, which is what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did.
06 · Mass Democracy
The constitutional frameworks of the 18th century initially granted the vote to a tiny slice — property-owning white men. Over the next 150 years, eligibility widened in staggered pushes: working-class men, non-white men, women, colonized peoples, and finally — in the U.S. — Black Southerners whose constitutional voting rights had been nullified for a century. The mechanism became 'one person, one vote, counted honestly.' Polling, mass media, and party systems all emerged to service that mechanism. By 1990 it was the default worldwide claim, even where the reality fell short.
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