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The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, one of three adopted in response to the American Civil War, prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any male citizen twenty-one years old or older on account of his race. Particularly in the South, however, many practical barriers were erected to this becoming a reality. Most abused was the literacy test. The ability to read and write the English language was not banned as a basis for determining voter eligibility by this amendment and blacks were often denied the right to vote on this basis. Even literate blacks were often told they had "failed" such a test, if in fact, it had even actually been administered. On the other hand, illiterate whites were often allowed to vote through a " Grandfather clause" which waived literacy requirments if one's grandfather had been a qualified voter, which for most blacks in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War was an impossibility. Selective enforcement of the poll tax was frequently also used to disqualify black voters, a fact which led to the eventual adoption of the Twenty-fourth Amendment. Intimidation tactics were employed to bar blacks from voting as well, such as "night rides" by the Ku Klux Klan. Economic tactics such as eviction from rental housing or termination of employment were also used . Such practices did not fully end until the American Civil Rights MovementThe civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. It has been made up of many movements, though it is often used to refer to the struggles, which scored one of its greatest triumphs when it encouraged the passage by CongressA congress is a gathering of people. Congress is the name of the main legislative body in a state that operates under a congressional system of government. A congress is different from a parliament in that legislative initiative is vested into it. In a co of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A somewhat parallel, yet different movement, was that for women's suffrageThe international movement for women's suffrage led by suffragists and suffragettes, was a social, economic and political reform movement aimed at extending the suffrage (i. the right to vote) to women, advocating equal suffrage (abolition of graded votes. In some ways this, too, could be said to have grown out of the American Civil War, as women were some of the most visible leaders in the AbolitionAbolition is the act of formally destroying something through legal means, either by making it illegal, or simply no longer allowing it to exist in any form. Famous things that have been abolished include: Slavery; see also: Abolitionism The Soviet Union movement. This led to more political activism on the part of middle and upper class women generally. Another political movement that was largely driven by women in the same era was the anti- alcoholIn general usage, alcohol (from Arabic al-khwl , or al-ghawl ) refers almost always to ethanol, also known as grain alcohol and often to any beverage that contains ethanol (see alcoholic beverage . This sense underlies the term alcoholism ( addiction to a Temperance movementThe Temperance Movement was a movement in support of total abstinence from alcohol during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was generally confined to English-speaking countries, and was particularly strong in the United States and Wales. In the United, which eventually led to the Eighteenth AmendmentAmendment XVIII (the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, along with the passage of the Volstead Act (which defined "intoxicating liquors"), established Prohibition. The amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, having been approved b and Prohibition. Outstanding leaders of the suffrage movement included Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Wyoming became the first state to allow women to vote on the same basis as men, but the issue was left to the states until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which became effective in time to allow the voting by women nationally in the Presidential election of 1920.
A third voting rights movement was the movement in the 1960s to require the voting age to be lowered to eighteen from twenty-one. This movement was given far greater impetus by the Vietnam War, as it was noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in it were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. This, too, had previously been a state issue, as several states, notably Georgia, Kentucky, and Hawaii, had already allowed voting at a younger age than twenty-one. The Twenty-sixth Amendment required all states to set their voting age at no higher than eighteen ( as of 2004 no state has opted for an earlier age, although some have discussed it).
The most important concerns for voting rights in the United States today are with regard to the continuing lack of voting rights in the nation's capital, Washington, DC, where over half a million citizen-residents still have neither effective local control nor representation in the U.S. House or Senate; with regard to voting rights for those who are disabled; and with regard to voting rights for those whose primary language is not English. Federal legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA, or "Motor-Voter Act") and the Help America Vote Act of 2001 (HAVA) address some of these concerns of the disabled and non-English speaking. The Twenty-third Amendment gave the District of Columbia three electors and hence the right to vote for President. In 1978, Congress sent to the states for ratification another constitutional amendment which would have allowed the District representation in the Congress as well, but this proposed amendment had a seven-year time limit in which to be ratified and failed to receive the assent of the necessary three-quarters of the states by 1985. Since that time, Congress has consistently refused to pass along to the states for ratification another consititutional amendment which would give District of Columbia residents either representation in both the Senate and the House as if the District were a state or, as has also been proposed, voting representation in the House only. Additionally, Congress has continued to use its Constitutionally-granted jurisidiction over the District "in all cases whatsoever" to countermand the expressed will of District voters through officials they have elected. For this reason, many Washington residents call their city "The Last Colony", the home of "taxation without representation".