What did the Fifteenth Amendment prohibit and what challenges did it face in practice?

• A. It prohibited denying the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; but literacy tests, intimidation, and other barriers persisted.
• B. It guaranteed equal protection under the law in all states.
• C. It allowed states to set their own voting qualifications.
• D. It prohibited poll taxes, registration fees, and literacy tests.

Answer: (A)

The Fifteenth Amendment is about preventing voting discrimination based on race, color, or having been enslaved. It bans denying someone the right to vote for those reasons, which was a crucial legal step after the Civil War. Yet, enforcement was weak and contested, so in practice many barriers persisted. Across the South, literacy tests, intimidation, violent harassment, and other obstacles were used to discourage or block Black voters even with the amendment on the books. This gap between a guaranteed right and the reality of voting in many places shows how constitutional protections required strong enforcement to translate into actual political participation. Other choices miss this core point: equal protection is tied to the Fourteenth Amendment, not this one; the Fifteenth does not grant states leeway to set their own voting qualifications; and while literacy tests and poll taxes became tools of disenfranchisement, the amendment itself did not prohibit those measures outright (that came later through other laws and amendments).