The Fifteenth Amendment, lithograph with watercolor, ca. 1870-1874

In the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, Congress declared it illegal to deny citizens the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This lithograph celebrating the amendment features a portrait of Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress, with abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany.

Lithography and publication by Thomas Kelly, New York, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress