The Fourteenth Amendment did not explicitly grant the vote to African American men, although it decreased congressional representation for states that denied them the vote. Congress debated proposals for an amendment forbidding discrimination in voting based on race, and some Americans argued that women’s suffrage should also be included. But the amendment passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870 did not mention gender. As a result, it benefited only men until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. And, for almost one hundred years after its ratification, the Fifteenth Amendment offered very little protection to African American men, either.