African American voters were methodically turned away from the polling stations, preventing them from voting. They were denied the right/opportunity to vote through use of techniques of direct Disenfranchisement. Direct disenfranchisement refers to activities that clearly hindered people from voting or their votes from being counted. Electronic fraud involved throwing out non-Democratic votes from the ballot box, so that only the Democratic votes could be counted. In 1870, the 15 th Amendment was passed by the Congress to address this problem. The 15 th Amendment of the U.S Constitution had banned explicit disenfranchisement based on race or past enslavement in efforts to combat the problem.
Due to the ban, he Southern Democrats devised various methods in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in efforts to prevent African Americans from voting. Examples of these techniques included the use of grandfather clauses, literary tests, poll taxes, white primaries, electronic fraud, intimidation and violence. When these techniques could not hinder African Americans from exercising their voting right, the Southerners resorted to threatening them with losing their job if they took part in voting. Violence was the major technique used to prevent African Americans from voting. For instance, in 1873, a group of whites killed approximately 100 African Americans because they had gathered to fight for the Republican office holders against the Colfax, California attacks.
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After the passing of the 15 th Amendment, the African Americans still experienced challenges to vote fifty years later especially in the South. Many brave and impassioned African Americans took to the street protesting, marching, leading to arrest, and even death of some due to fighting for voting equality. The remarkable change in the situation of African American voting right in the South was facilitated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which banned states from using direct disfranchisement methods to segregate African Americans from voting. Therefore, this Act allowed African Americans to exercise their voting rights.
