On this episode of Our American Stories, shortly after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, Thomas Mundy Peterson walked into a polling place in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and made history as the first Black voter in the United States. His ballot was cast at a time when the meaning of the Constitution was still being tested and when many states resisted the idea of true suffrage for African Americans. Historian Elliott Drago of the Jack Miller Center shares how one man’s simple act of civic duty became a milestone in the story of American voting rights.
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