When was the Fifteenth Amendment ratified?

The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870 when Iowa (per the official Department of State certification) became the twenty-eighth state to approve it, completing the constitutional requirement of three quarters of the 37 states then in the Union. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certified the amendment on March 30, 1870 at the express direction of Congress.

Congress had passed the proposed text on February 26, 1869 after debating whether to extend the prohibition to other grounds besides race. Some Radical Republicans wanted to ban discrimination on the basis of literacy, property, religion, and nativity as well as race, but that broader version failed in the Senate. The eventual narrow wording covered race, color, and previous condition of servitude, the formula that southern states would later evade through nominally race neutral devices.

Ratification proceeded quickly in northern and recently reconstructed southern states. Nevada was actually the first state to ratify on March 1, 1869, days after Congress acted. Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia were required to ratify the amendment as a condition of their readmission to the Union under congressional Reconstruction. Tennessee, which had been readmitted in 1866 before the requirement was imposed, did not ratify until 1997. By February 3, 1870, twenty-eight states had ratified, and Secretary Fish issued his official certification on March 30, 1870.

The amendment immediately produced a wave of Black political participation in the South. About 2,000 Black men held public office during Reconstruction. Sixteen Black men served in Congress between 1870 and 1877. Black voters constituted majorities in some southern states and pluralities in others. Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black U.S. senator on February 25, 1870, and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black member of the House on December 12, 1870.

Within a generation, however, the gains of 1870 were rolled back across the South through poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, intimidation, and outright violence. By 1910, Black voter registration in former Confederate states was nearly zero. The Voting Rights Act of August 6, 1965 finally gave the Fifteenth Amendment full force in federal elections. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment ratified January 23, 1964 banned poll taxes in federal elections. Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966 banned poll taxes in state elections. The Voting Rights Act was substantially weakened by Shelby County v. Holder (2013), prompting renewed efforts to legislate enforcement. The Fifteenth Amendment continues to provide the textual basis for federal voting rights litigation.