African American Hardships
...s. Between 1877 and 1890, eleven black men belonged in the state senate and forty-three in the house. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited states from denying votes on account of color, race, or past servitude, which also went with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished involuntary servitude everywhere in the US and declared that congress shall have power to enforce this outcome by appropriate legislation. Although The Fifteenth amendment was made to protect African Americans, state legislatures found ways to exclude black voters without mentioning race, color, or servitude. As an example, state constitutional convention established the Mississippi Plan, which required voters to pay a poll tax eight months before each election, present the tax receipt at election time, and prove they can read and interpret the state constitution. These also affected poor whites that could not meet the poll tax, property, and literacy requirements. The fourteenth Amendment protected the rights only against infringement by state governments. Though the court said that if the blacks wanted legal protection, they must seek it from states. In the duration of the Civil Rights Cases the court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited segregation in public facilities. Lower court rulings suggested that blacks could be restricted to separate but equal laws, known as Jim Crow laws. With this, blacks were reminded every day of their lesser status. They were restricted to rear of streetcars, segregated in public bathrooms, hospitals, c...