The Fifteenth Amendment was approved by the required three-fourths of the states in 1870, regardless of California’s refusal to ratify it. Adult men among California’s four thousand Black residents began to register to vote. Almost a hundred years later in 1962, State Senator Albert Rodda Jr. introduced Senate Joint Resolution 9 to belated ratify the Fifteenth Amendment: “…whereas, the objective of this amendment was to forbid depriving Negroes of their voting rights on the basis of race of previous condition of slavery…the said Fifteenth Amendment has long been a vital part of the Constitution of the United States and should be ratified by the State of California to show the concurrence of this great State with the principles therein enunciated…” By that time, more than eight million Black Americans called California home.