1867 Voting Referendum: Iowa Time Machine February 3, 1870

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On February 3, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment officially became law in the United States, codifying a 1868 referendum passed in Iowa that granted suffrage to all male citizens of the state, regardless of race. Iowa's pioneering 1868 referendum removing racial restrictions from voting requirements sent ripples across the northern states and convinced Congress that nationwide Black male suffrage could succeed.

The aftermath of the Civil War left the nation wrestling with fundamental questions about citizenship and democracy. While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865 and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship in 1868, the question of voting rights remained unresolved. Before the war, only five states, all in New England, allowed Black men to vote. The vast majority of northern and western states maintained whites-only suffrage despite their opposition to slavery. Iowa itself had soundly rejected Black voting rights in an 1857 referendum by a crushing nine-to-one margin.

The Reconstruction Acts forced former Confederate states to extend voting rights to Black men as a condition of rejoining the Union, but northern states faced no similar requirement. Northern Republicans found themselves in an awkward position, championing Black suffrage in the South while their own constituents rejected it at home. Alexander Clark of Muscatine emerged as Iowa's most effective voice for equal rights during the 1860s. He convened Iowa's first state Colored Convention in 1857, recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army, and in 1867 sued the Muscatine school board after officials barred his daughter, Susan, from attending the neighborhood public school. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in Clark's favor in March 1868.

Clark served as secretary and spokesman at the Iowa State Colored Convention in Des Moines, where delegates strategized for the upcoming suffrage referendum. On November 3, 1868, Iowa voters approved striking the word "white" from voting qualifications in the state constitution. Minnesota followed with similar legislation the same year. These twin victories in midwestern states demonstrated that northern voters could support Black suffrage, giving Republican legislators the confidence to pursue a constitutional amendment. Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment in February 1869 and sent it to the states for ratification. The required three-fourths of states approved it by February 3, 1870. #Iowa #History #OTD #BlackHistory