Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871

The Enforcement Acts of 1870–71 were passed to safeguard the voting rights of African American voters following the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments served to recognize civil rights and voting rights for freedmen as part of the wider process of reconstruction following the Civil War. African American voters were often subject to intimidation and violence as part of the growing political violence in the postwar south. The legislation sought to stop the Ku Klux Klan and ...