Question

Throughout U.S. history, numerous groups were discriminated against and were denied the right to vote.

Choose one of the following groups:

Native Americans
Women
African Americans


Answer the following questions about your chosen group's fight for suffrage.

Explain two specific challenges this group faced in regard to suffrage.
Explain methods this group used to overcome their challenges.
Explain any legislation, Constitutional amendments, and/or Supreme Court cases that helped this group gain suffrage.
Answer in five to six complete sentences.

Answer 1

You should choose your own group and write your own essay, but I'll offer an example here as a model.

African Americans

Two specific challenges:

• Initially, an enormous challenge was that African Americans were not considered full persons at all and were not given voting rights. The black population of the country was held in slavery in the South up until the Civil War.
• Even after being granted citizenship and voting rights after the Civil War, African Americans still faced discriminatory practices in voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means were used to block black citizens from exercising the right to vote.

Methods used to overcome these challenges:

• Even before the Civil War won freedom for slaves in the United States, abolitionists argued for the equality of people of all races. Black leaders like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman worked to end slavery, free slaves, and give black persons civil rights.
• Later in US history, the civil rights movement (with leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and others) worked to end Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination against black citizens.

Legislation, Constitutional amendments, Supreme Court cases:

Key Constitutional amendments were:

• 14th Amendment, granting citizenship without regard to race.
• 15th Amendment, granting voting rights without regard to race.
• 24th Amendment, outlawing poll taxes (one of the ways poor black persons were kept from voting)

Additionally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements, as well as protecting against racial discrimination in other matters.