Historical-BM2

=The Right to Vote=

For the majority of its history, the United States has had problems with racism and the voting rights of various minorities. In many cases, these issues have been resolved, though there are still problems today.

The Fifteenth Ammendment
Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

African Americans were enfranchised in 1870 by the fifteenth ammendment, this by no means meant that they were //able// to vote. Through the use of various discriminatory laws and taxes, states managed to restrict the voting rights for many years - arguably, they still do. Some of the many ways in which states denied African Americans the right to vote were:


 * Voter qualifying tests
 * Poll taxes
 * Grandfather clauses
 * Intimidation/violence

Mark Twain's Critique
Mark Twain used __The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn__ not so much to criticize the issue of voting rights as to criticize the people and attitudes which infringed upon them. Twain uses Pap, the embodiment of evil in the novel, to satirize the opinions of the majority of the South at the time: that African Americans were less than human and did not deserve the right to vote. To ridicule this notion even further, the man who pap criticizes is only partly African American, and a wealthy and respactable college professor. This means that the only reason Pap - or anyone else - has to deny him voting rights is ethnicity, an idea which seems ridiculous. In this way, Twain effectively points out the attitudes of society which are causing the problem, and through satire ridicules those who hold the opinions.