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Black Enfranchisement In Kentucky: The Impact Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Gail Joyce Guiling

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

After the Civil War, newly freed slaves hoped to gam the full benefits of American citizenship. In 1870, ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment led African Americans to believe that they had attailled the cherished right of suffrage. Nearly a century elapsed, however, before the proffered right became a reality. The VotingRightsActof1965 fulfilled the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment. The long road between 1870 and 1965, however, was littered with the carcasses of attempted disfranchising schemes. The states of the Deep South were not alone in their efforts to prevent enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment or in their refusal to surrender …