On this episode of Dave Does History, we journey back to March 31, 1870—one day after the Fifteenth Amendment was certified.

In a small town called Perth Amboy, New Jersey, a man named Thomas Mundy Peterson quietly made history. Born to an enslaved mother and a free father, Peterson became the first African American to cast a vote under the new constitutional protections of the Fifteenth Amendment.

His vote may have been cast in a local election, but its impact echoed across a divided nation.

This is the story of a single ballot that helped redefine American democracy.