Video: 'Sound Smart: The 15th Amendment | History'

(Thursday, February 3, 1870, during the Reconstruction era) — The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” was ratified today as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Video: 'The 15th Amendment Explained: The Constitution for Dummies Series'

The amendment created a split within the women’s suffrage movement over the amendment not prohibiting denying the women the right to vote on account of gender (women gained the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920).