15 AMENDMENT

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: May 24, 1900 Republicans vote no in referendum for constitutional convention in Virginia, designed to create a new state constitution disenfranchising African-Americans A majority of white Virginians disapproved of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from denying the vote to any man because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Ensuring that Virginia elections were set up to express the public opinion rather than suppress it was a task that took decades to complete.