Thomas Mundy Peterson Day

 

In the spring of 1870, with the ink barely dry on the Fifteenth Amendment, a man named Thomas Mundy Peterson walked into a polling place in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and dropped a paper ballot into a wooden box. That simple, quiet act—mundane to most of us today—was anything but ordinary in its time. It was history itself, unfolding in real time. For generations, African Americans had been denied the most basic promise of citizenship: the right to vote. And yet, there stood Peterson, son of an enslaved mother and a free father, casting the first vote by an African American under the newly certified protections of the Fifteenth Amendment. His vote, cast on March 31, 1870, came just one day after the amendment was officially certified. It was not merely a vote for a revised city charter—it was a vote for dignity, for citizenship, and for a new American future.

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The road to that moment had been long, brutal, and filled with deliberate barriers. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, many in the North believed the work was done. But across the South, a new form of control emerged—not with chains, but with ink and law. Southern states quickly passed “Black Codes,” laws designed to keep newly freed African Americans in a state of dependency. These codes restricted movement, denied access to courts, limited employment options, and—critically—sought to keep Black men away from the ballot box.

Congress responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law. But even these steps were not enough. Many states, North and South, resisted expanding suffrage. In 1869, only eight Northern states allowed African Americans to vote. In Southern states, it took federal occupation and Union troops to enforce voting rights during Reconstruction.

The Fifteenth Amendment was born from this political and moral crisis. After much debate and compromise, Congress proposed language that prohibited denying the vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was not a perfect instrument—it said nothing about poll taxes, literacy tests, or other tricks states might use—but it was a bold step. Ratified on February 3, 1870, and certified on March 30, the Fifteenth Amendment marked a turning point. President Ulysses S. Grant called it “the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life.”

And so, on March 31, 1870, in a municipal election in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the first test of this new law took place. The ballot was over whether to revise the city’s charter or replace it with a township form of government. Thomas Mundy Peterson, born in Metuchen in 1824 to Lucy Green—a woman formerly enslaved—and a father who worked for the Mundy family, stepped into history by casting his vote in favor of the charter revision. The measure passed 230 to 63, and soon after, Peterson was appointed to a seven-member committee to refine the final version. That, too, passed the state legislature the following year.

Not everyone celebrated. Peterson would later recall that a white man tore up his own ballot in protest, saying the vote was worthless if a Black man could cast one. According to Peterson, that man did not vote again for ten years. But others did take note, and not just locally. Peterson’s historic role was later confirmed by a bipartisan investigation after a man in Princeton claimed he had voted first. The evidence affirmed that Peterson’s vote, cast one day after certification of the Fifteenth Amendment, was indeed the first under its authority.

Peterson’s life after that first vote was one of continued civic engagement. He served on a jury—the first Black juror in Perth Amboy—and remained active in politics. He was a delegate to both Republican and later Prohibition Party conventions, believing that temperance was a critical issue for the future of his people. Though he lost his only known bid for elected office, he remained deeply involved in public life.

In 1884, the citizens of Perth Amboy raised seventy dollars to honor him with a gold medallion. On one side was the face of Abraham Lincoln. On the other, an inscription recognizing Peterson as “The First Colored Voter in the U.S. Under the Provisions of the 15th Amendment.” He wore it proudly until the day he died in 1904.

Thomas Mundy Peterson’s legacy is not found in marble monuments or great political power. It is found in that moment—a simple vote, cast by a man whose ancestors had no such right. His story is a reminder that democracy is not a finished project. It is not secured by legislation alone. It must be exercised, defended, and remembered.

The Fifteenth Amendment, like all great promises, has been tested again and again—from Reconstruction to Jim Crow, from literacy tests to modern-day voter ID laws. But every march forward began with a step like Peterson’s. Quiet. Determined. Unshaken. It is why, even now, March 31 is celebrated in New Jersey as Thomas Mundy Peterson Day—a small tribute to one man’s courage to believe that the Constitution could belong to him too.