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Many of us take our right to vote for granted. However, our state and federal government have been instrumental in the past in denying different groups of people the right to vote for many years. Some of the groups include African-Americans, woman, less fortunate people that didn’t own land and/or couldn’t pay a poll tax, people who could not read or write and young people. Throughout history, these groups have organized, struggled, and fought for their god given right to make the choice to vote.
The Constitution didn’t specifically restrict voting to people by the color of their skin. But it stated that only freemen or people who were not slaves could vote. This made it illegal for most African-Americans to vote. It wasn’t until after the Civil War in 1870 that the fifteenth amendment was passed that allowed Black men to vote, but not Black women. After the fifteenth amendment was passed, many states passed a new law that restricted Black men to vote. The Southern States imposed the “grandfather” clause. The “grandfather” clause stated that Black men could vote if their grandfathers were allowed to vote. This didn’t help Black men because their grandfathers would have been slaves and would not have been able to vote either.
For many years, only men where allowed to vote. Men said that women’s roles were to be laborers in the household. They also considered women to be too emotional to make wise choices. It took seventy-five years of protesting before women won the ability to vote. In 1920 the nineteenth Amendment was passed which states that all women, no matter what race, where allowed to vote.
It wasn’t until 1964 that the twenty-fourth Amendment was passed for poor people. When this country was first founded only white men who owned land were granted voting privileges. Lawmakers believed that only property owners had enough at stake in the country to vote responsibly. In the 1800’s, the property requirements were replaced with poll tax. Poll taxes required citizen, to pay a special fee in order to vote. Even with this new law, poor people still couldn’t vote.
Some states only allowed people who could read and write to vote. All voters had to take a literacy test to prove that they could read and write. State lawmakers believed that only people who could read and write could get the information they needed to make smart choices. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. This act banned literacy tests because there are many other ways to get the information needed to make smart choices.
Young people were also not allowed to vote. Voting was restricted to adults twenty-one years of age and older. During the Vietnam War, there were kids eighteen years of age sent to fight for our country and died for their country. Many believed that if they were old enough to enlist, they were old enough to make the choice to vote. The twenty-ninth amendment was passed in 1971 that granted the right to anyone eighteen years and older to vote.
Today, many people still do not take the time to vote. After all the protesting and fighting our ancestors did to win us our right to go to the polls and vote, we still take it for granted. The United States government has come a long way since then. African-Americans, woman, poor people, the young and the people who are unable to read and write have had the hardest time earning their right to vote. The next time the polls are open, think about those who fought for your God given right and go make your choice.
