The First Vote, Harper's Weekly
Following the Civil War, African American males won the right to vote with passage of the 15th Amendment.
When Southern whites regained control of their state governments at the end of Reconstruction, they put in place restrictive suffrage measures designed to prevent African Americans - and often poor whites - from voting. The new obstacles included poll taxes, property taxes, literacy tests, and long residency requirements. In this woodcut from the November 1867 Harper's Weekly, Virginia freedmen vote for the first time.