Amendment 15

Hello friends,

As you probably know, February is Black History Month.  What you may or may not realize, though, is that the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on February 3rd, 1870, almost one year after it was proposed.  140 years ago today, our leaders chose to include all races in the participation of government by adding the following to our governing document:

The right of citizens of the United States 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.

This was the first major step toward a truly equal society.  We live in one of the only countries in the world that has allowed former slaves to vote.  I don't mean former slave races; I want you to truly understand how special it was, particularly at that time, for someone who had once been a slave to have any say in government.

Because modern Americans aren't familiar with slavery in our everyday lives, we always think about slaves as "second class citizens"; they're much lower on the totem pole.  Freed slaves can often be second or third class citizens, depending on the society in which they are freed and if their former servitude is widely known.  Slaves themselves, though, often were and are considered as less than livestock.  In some places, such as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, women hold this position and slaves can be higher or lower than them in the household heirarchy, depending on how the male of the house values them.

The point, though, is that we've forgotten how precious it is that we don't have official classes in our citizenry.  We started over a century ago with little steps, continually moving toward a racially unbiased society.  The 15th Amendment, with all its novelty that former slaves can vote, laid the groundwork for the civil rights activists of the 20th century.

140 years ago, our forefathers took emancipation one step further and stated, unequivocally, that every citizen who was otherwise qualified to vote would be allowed without regard to race.  Of course, it would be another 50 years before we recognized women as "qualified", but that's a tale for another day.

Until tomorrow,
MK