February 3, 1870: The 15th Amendment Is Ratified

Thomas Mundy Peterson and Perth Amboy City Hall

February 3, 1870: The 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is ratified. It prohibits the federal government, and every State, from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In other words, even if a person had once been a slave, he could still vote.

It was the last of the 3 "Reconstruction Amendments." In 1865, the 13th Amendment prohibited slavery. In 1868, the 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship to every person born on American soil, regardless of race or whether they had previously been a slave. (No entries for those Amendments: 1869, the year the Cincinnati Red Stockings started, is my cutoff point for this blog.)

On March 31, 1870, Thomas Mundy Peterson became the 1st black person to vote under the protection of the 15th Amendment. He voted at City Hall in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in a referendum election to adopt a revised City Charter. He voted for it, and it passed overwhelmingly. The City later named an elementary school after him.

That City Hall was already historic: Built in 1717, and rebuilt after fires in 1731, 1745 and 1767, it was home to the New Jersey Provincial Assembly until 1775. In 1789, the State Legislature met there, and made New Jersey the 1st State to ratify the 1st 10 Amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

Nevertheless, many States, most of them Southern, found ways to get around the Amendment, and keep black people from voting. And, of course, it only guaranteed the right to vote to men. It took until 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified, for women to get the right to vote. And it took until 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, for there to be full enforcement of the 15th Amendment.

In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, voting rights have been under attack by various States, not all of them Southern.

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February 3, 1870 was a Thursday. There were no scores on this historic day: It was too early in the year to play baseball, football barely existed, and basketball and hockey didn't yet exist. This was also true of March 31, 1870, the day Thomas Peterson cast his vote.