Hearing From the Silenced Part I (Minorities)

Before the 15th Amendment the only people who could vote in America were white men. The 15th Amendment was passed on February 3, 1870. It stated that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This act was, passed after the Civil War, finally gave minorities the right to have a say in this country. However, having the right to vote and actually being able to vote are not the same things. 

Minorities were harassed and intimidated if they attempted to vote. There were police officers and member of White Citizens Councils outside of registration offices who would vocally and physically harass minorities attempting to vote. They would even harass the white employees who would give black workers time off to register to vote. 

Additionally, the process of registering to vote was intentionally made to be overly complex to discourage minorities from voting. So called literacy tests were put into place to prevent minorities from voting. The literacy tests themselves could prove to be extraordinarily difficult, and among the different types, the most difficult tests were always given to blacks. These tests might require a person to read complicated sections from the Constitution to make sure they could read properly, and they could also demand that a person show an ability to write by answering difficult questions about what they had read. Considering the lack of access to a decent education for many minorities, these literacy tests were completely discriminatory and designed to prevent certain voices from being heard.

Once practices such as these were outlawed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, more and more people's interests and concerns could be heard, and minorities have had an ever increasing role in the outcomes of elections. It is widely believed that the minority vote could be the deciding factor in the 2012 election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and as the U.S. goes forward minorities will make up a larger and larger percentage of the overall vote.