#OnThisDay in 1870, Virginia was readmitted to the Union after the state passed a new constitution that allowed Black men to vote and ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments. The readmission came five years after Black men first pushed to vote. 

A month after the Civil War ended, hundreds of Black men showed up at polling places in Norfolk to vote. Most were turned away, but federal poll workers in one precinct did allow them to cast ballots. 

“Some historians think that was the first instance of blacks voting in the South,” The Washington Post wrote. “Even in the North, most places didn’t allow blacks to vote.” 

Black men showed up in droves to serve on the constitutional convention. One of them, John Brown, who had been enslaved and had seen his wife and daughter sold, sent out a replica of the ballot with the reminder, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He won, defeating two white candidates. 

Brown joined the 104 delegates, nearly a fourth of them Black men, in drafting the new constitution. That cleared the way not only for Black voting, but for Virginia’s senators and representatives to take their seats in Congress. 

But hope of continued progress began to fade by the end of the year when the Legislature began to create its first Jim Crow laws, starting with separate schools for Black and white students. Other Jim Crow laws followed in Virginia and other states to enforce racism on almost every aspect of life, including separate restrooms, separate drinking fountains, separate restaurants, separate seating at movie theaters, separate waiting rooms, separate places in the hospital and when death came, separate cemeteries.

Following Mississippi’s lead, Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1902 that helped to disenfranchise 90% of Black Virginians who voted. States continued to adopt Jim Crow statutes until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land.