Series: The 15th and 19th Amendments go Underground: The Antislavery Movement and Voting Rights

The 15th & 19th Amendments extended voting rights to African American men & women, respectively. Both amendments moved the nation closer to its ideals, but the fight against racism & sexism began earlier. The participation of marginalized groups in the antislavery crusade, including the Underground Railroad, reinforced that they weren’t content with or deserving of their second-class status. After slavery was abolished, activists continued to demand justice.

• Article 1: “Liberty and Equality shall embrace each other:” Free African Americans Before the Civil War Who Made the 15th Amendment Possible

  

  The year 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the 15th Amendment, the important constitutional amendment that guaranteed the right to vote to all men regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Read more

• Article 2: Black Abolitionists and the Fifteenth Amendment

  

  The Fifteenth Amendment, granting black men the vote, was ratified on February 3, 1870. Black abolitionists, who had been struggling for decades against slavery and racial discrimination in the U.S. and abroad, saw it as one of their most consequential achievements. 2020 is year is the sesquicentennial of that constitutional landmark. Read more

• Article 3: The “Right Man in the Right Place”: John Jones and the Early African American Struggle for Civil Rights

  

  Born in North Carolina, John Jones (1816-1879) was the son of a free African American woman and a white man. Apprenticed as a tailor, he was working in Memphis, Tennessee, by 1837. Held as an indentured servant after his term of apprenticeship had expired, Jones ultimately won his freedom in court. Read more

• Article 4: Clarina Howard Nichols

  

  As debates about temperance, woman’s suffrage, and abolition heated up in the 1840s and ‘50s, Vermont-born Clarina Howard Nichols joined powerful social reformers like Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott to advocate for social justice for women and enslaved blacks. Read more

• Article 5: Mary Jane Richardson Jones, Emancipation and Women’s Suffrage Activist

  

  Mary Jane (née Richardson) Jones, an African American woman, was born free in 1819 in Memphis, Tennessee and would make her way to Illinois, where she would spend the remainder of her life. As her granddaughter noted in the above reminiscence, Mary opened her home to enslaved people escaping to freedom. Read more