A truly positive Fifteenth Amendment (one that did not allow for the disenfranchisement of those convicted of crimes) might have prevented the manipulation of criminal laws after Reconstruction to disenfranchise blacks, not to mention the situation today in which millions of persons, half of them no longer in prison, cannot vote because of state felony disenfranchisement laws. Such laws make no reference to race, and thus have been deemed by the courts not to violate the Fifteenth Amendment. But because of racism inherent in our police and judicial systems, criminal laws have a
...more
