St. Petersburg College Civic Literacy Practice Test

The main idea here is that voting rights cannot be denied based on race or whether someone was formerly enslaved. That protection comes from the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870 after the Civil War. It explicitly says that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged by the federal or state governments on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This was part of Reconstruction, aimed at securing suffrage for Black men after emancipation. Keep in mind that this amendment does not guarantee universal suffrage for everyone—women wouldn’t gain the right to vote for several more decades, and various barriers to voting persisted until later civil rights measures and court decisions addressed them. For context, other amendments addressed different issues: one abolished slavery, another defined citizenship and equal protection, and another redefined how the President and Congress are elected.